


To Be of Use: A Taboo Fanfic

by wysiwygot



Category: Taboo (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Colonialism, Cultural Appropriation, Daddy Issues, Dark Magic, Domestic, F/M, Fluff and Smut, Ghosts, Heterosexual Sex, Maids, Mommy Issues, Oral Sex, Regency Romance, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Witchcraft, Witches
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-11
Updated: 2018-04-08
Packaged: 2019-02-13 16:42:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 40,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12988170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wysiwygot/pseuds/wysiwygot
Summary: AU set some time in the first season of Taboo, with an original character. I know, me neither, but give us a chance.Lorna hasn't moved in and James Keziah Delaney is already over Zilpha. The place is falling apart, so James brings on a maid to help maintain House Delaney.REVIEWS:"It's really dense text," gushes reader unfamiliar with canon."I haven't gotten around to reading it yet," admits long-time friend of author."..." grunts Tom Hardy (probably).***All images and characters belong to their respective copyright holders. Lyrics/chapter titles are by Bill Callahan. Matilda Woodruff and any other original characters belong to me. This is just for fun, because Season 2 is SO FAR AWAY, so please don't sue me for playing with your dolls.





	1. Prelude: A Man Needs a Maid

**Author's Note:**

> I'm releasing chapters here and on Wattpad (under the same title). I've been out of the business end of the fanfic world for a long time, so please be patient and gentle! :D Also, I feed on comments, so keep 'em coming.
> 
> Please note that AO3 doesn't seem to allow for my prelude in its chaptering system, so everything winds up being off by one. Sorry about that!
> 
> CHAPTER SUMMARY:  
> Prelude: In which James Keziah Delaney has nothing to do with what happened to the maid.  
> Ch. 1: In which James Keziah Delaney gets a better look at the maid.  
> Ch. 2: In which James Keziah Delaney goes on a dream walk to visit the maid.  
> Ch. 3: In which James Keziah Delaney sleeps over.  
> Ch. 4: In which James Keziah Delaney makes the maid cry.  
> Ch. 5: In which James Keziah Delaney moves the maid into his room.  
> Ch. 6: In which James Keziah Delaney teaches the maid how.  
> Ch. 7: In which James Keziah Delaney really gives the maid the what for.  
> Ch. 8: In which James Keziah Delaney and the maid bunk up in the attic for three days.  
> Ch. 9: In which James Keziah Delaney reveals to the maid that he is, in fact, a monster.  
> Ch. 10: In which James Keziah Delaney finds reassurance that the monster is useful.  
> Ch. 11: In which James Keziah Delaney always has someone waiting for him at home.

PRELUDE: A MAN NEEDS A MAID

James Keziah Delaney perhaps just liked the housemaid because she's ugly like him. He, too, was unlovable and unloved. Unloving. Her scars were a fair bit worse than his, even, being that they were on a woman. On James, scars looked menacing. Intimidating. Perhaps even striking, in the right light—which is to say, no light at all. But the girl's scars looked like what they were: horrible reminders of violence, ruination. Not something most people want to see on a young woman. The scars she wore made her unmarriageable, as her own aunt had put it. However, Matilda's scars also served a beautiful purpose, something not Aunt Clara nor her dead witch sister, nor anyone else could have imagined: They endeared her to Mr Delaney the younger.

It was vital—no one should know that: not Brace, not Ms Bow, definitely not Zilpha. Not anyone. That kind of knowledge could and would be used against him, he feared, as he feared all vulnerability. As everything he'd ever said and done was used against him.

In truth, what James liked most about Miss Matilda—Tilly, as Brace insisted on calling her—was that she was not a complication or a vulnerability. At least, not yet. She might become one, he supposed, if the wrong people found out that the small, scarred housemaid, not even as fearsome as a mouse, was venturing to the market for the singular purpose of making and serving up food for House Delaney, the ranking number-one enemy of the East India Company and a threat to the Crown, as well.

Matilda was able to pass in and out of the house without much notice, James made sure of that. Just a bit of sleight of hand, some obfuscation, and perhaps help via a secret exit through the back garden. She'd become an outright asset to his house, now that Brace was out at the docks or running letters into the evening—at least when he wasn't on the brandy nod in his quarters. There was no shortage of chores or errands to be conducted outside of the house, but there was a true shortage of workers inside his father's crumbling manse.

The girl, then, had been mentioned by Clara, one of his father's old slags who'd been receiving a stipend for some other brat she'd birthed and claimed as Horace's. Clara objected strongly to the money being cut off, almost as much as James, the new head of the house, objected paying it in the first place. Determined to find an ongoing replacement for the lost income, Clara threw out the suggestion of employing of her niece, an orphan, as a last-ditch option. No one else would have Tilly, she said, and surely Mr Delaney, businessman that he was, could find a use for her.

James thought about it for the space of two breaths. Indeed. He did have a use for Matilda. Or, more rightly, his household might.

It's not as if Brace was going to take to regularly washing the linens or peeling parsnips. That much was documented. Historical, even. Ms Bow, still an occasional visitor, was only good for doing the things that ladies of the house do: bringing flowers for decoration (which James had no time for and rarely even took notice of), huffing and puffing about the tracked-in plough mud before ordering someone else to bring out the broom, airing out the upstairs bedrooms before Brace could get around to nailing them shut, and occasionally bringing over some kind of chocolate—which may or may not be James's favorite thing in the world. But a few roses, several bossy orders and dusty squares of cocoa do not a homemaker make. Despite being part owner of the house by marriage rights, Ms Bow was a guest, not a roommate.

Brace—now, there was a roommate. Set up for life in his small room on the parlor level, he was much a part of the house as the window frames or even the cornerstone. All those years, working for the elder Delaney like a dog, holding down the proverbial fort. A dog with a bit more bark than bite, maybe, but he was still part of Delaney life in a way that a maid could never be.

Yes, Miss Matilda—sorry, Tilly—was easier to forget about than Brace's ever-present grumpiness or Ms Bow's incessant chirping. She was far easier to disregard than Zilpha, if James was being frank with himself. Zilpha, his dear half-sister, seemed to forget about him so easily, so quickly, and so many times. James's mind was weary of thinking of her, though, and her ridiculous charade of finery. Her false piety enraged him. Not to mention her fine, fragrant neck and her sooty eyes. Nor her long legs, straddling him both in his memory and more recently on a church pew. Her false promises be damned. Her betrayal, every time she let her husband inside of her. No, she was not easy to forget about at all.

Unless James was in somewhat of an altered state, his thoughts of Zilpha were almost wholly negative. Any passion he had for her now was violent and regressive. More complicated than before. Even just a flash of her in his mind and his jaw would tighten and his teeth gnash. It wasn't entirely about his sister, but the monster he was in the reflection of Zilpha's eyes. She hated him because he'd deserted her, or so she expressed in the subtext of every word. He'd deserted them.

She didn't know the half of it. His desertion. He'd died while off in Africa, and his spirit had been lost, found, lost and found again. He abandoned himself, deserted James Keziah Delaney with intent. When he returned to London, he was no longer his father's son, no longer Zilpha's brother. He was now, more than he'd ever been, his mother's son. He was Salish's boy, through and through. Under her spiritual advisement, James had to become a demon, a devil—because that's what it would take to secure Nootka Sound, with, he hoped, Zilpha at his side. Until ...

No, best to not think about any of that. See what a slick slope, that way of thinking. It was much easier to summon up thoughts of sweet, young Matilda, should the need arise to think (or not-think, as the case would be) on such things. The witch's girl was neatly tucked away at the opposite end of the house from him, in an old pantry off the kitchen, like a wind-up doll when and if he needed her. She didn't know what he was. She didn't even know what she was yet. But he did, if he'd ever recognized it in another person.

Matilda was the picture of a quiet, frightened creature, a doe. Most men wouldn't notice her in a room, maybe not even a company man. She was a shadow, like him, but clean of conscience and good-hearted. The darkness in her past was easily outshone by his, to her benefit. She didn't know James from Adam, really—but for a few rumors. Even better, she didn't pretend to think she knew him, like every other woman in his life. He was not a soldier or a killer to her, not Mad Delaney nor even the son of Horace. He was just Mr Delaney, her employer.

The girl certainly had her own history, writ large across her very face, but he had naught to do with it. For once.


	2. Like a Spindle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How Matilda Woodruff, the witch's daughter, ended up working at House Delaney and what she learned in her first week. 
> 
> Note: Last week was a prelude and this is Chapter 1, but it looks like crap with AO3's built-in chapter function, so I'm just rolling with how I title these.

CHAPTER 1: Like a Spindle

Matilda’s mother, Hypatia, was what she herself called an herbalist. That’s all, really—just a wise woman who knew her way around a hedge, as it were. But her talents in natural remedies and folk healing also turned out to be an excellent scapegoat when her lover’s family fell ill and died—all in one short week—of a previously unknown pox. Witch, they began to call her. Spell-craft, they charged. Seduction of local men, surely, but a probable abortionist, too. Perhaps she’d also done in her first husband, the missing father of her two children, because that’s what witches do.

So it came to be that a small but determined group of villagers burned Hypatia’s cottage down under cover of darkness. Matilda, still small, was the only one to survive the fire—but she was not entirely unscathed.

She’d learned that she was the daughter of a witch, not a healer, just moments before she learned that she was assumed to be an orphan. She was made to live with her mother’s sister, Clara, an enterprising woman who was, in the locals’ estimation, almost probably not a witch. A bitch, though, certainly. A bitch for hire. She earned her coins by odd jobs, casual whoring, and extorting hush money from any sloppy, unlucky husbands who sired bastards with her. Matilda’s main function as she grew into a woman, was to help Aunt Clara care for the children.

This is why Matilda was in Clara’s modest yard with the youngest cousin when James Keziah Delaney descended like a thundercloud into the garden. She took some note of his big, black coat and his impressively tall hat but, not seeing his face, didn’t pay him much regard. Just another patron of her aunt’s, most likely. She continued with telling young Derry about the hobs who struggled to manage the house’s spider infestation.

Later that evening, it was explained to Matilda that she was to report to work at House Delaney the very next morning. That man with the black coat was not a john, although his father—Mad Horace Delaney—had been, some time ago. Matilda’s duties at home to be assumed by the next-eldest girl. And her conscription in town was to be ongoing, as long as she didn’t disappoint.

She’d fit right in there, Aunt Clara chortled. Meaning, as Hypatia’s daughter, she would. People were more scared of Delaney than Hypatia, for damned sure. He had such a manner about him. It was said that the young Mr Delaney was a devil sent back from hell. (Or was it Africa? Whichever were further and hotter, Clara said.) Either way, he was a devil with some coin and he was in need of a housemaid.

Matilda would fulfill that role and send her pay home to Clara, who felt she’d been long burdened with the expense of a niece. Plus, it was generally assumed by Clara and her cohorts that Matilda had no prospects. She would certainly not be marriageable, due to a lack of dowry and that hideous face. The only way Matilda might marry, Clara told her—often—was a marriage to God. And, frankly, the church wouldn’t allow an abortionist’s daughter to take orders. Not for nothing, either, as Clara’s bastard-filled household couldn’t spare the lost income of a nun in the family.

* * *

That first week at House Delaney, Matilda’s sole interactions were with Mr Brace, who’d been the former Mr Delaney’s man. Matilda believed very earnestly that Mr Delaney the younger didn’t know she was present, even when in the same room with her. He didn’t make eye contact and hadn’t since the day he stepped into Clara’s garden, to tie up of one of his father’s many loose ends. Isn’t that a shame? Go to tidy up business and wind up with her as a burden.

Much to her relief, however, Mr Delaney wasn’t at home but for a few short hours in the middle of the night and perhaps an hour or two in the morning. When he was home, he mostly shut himself in his rooms upstairs. Matilda had heard noises (chanting? prayers? strange tongues) and smelled the odd smoke. She’d also seen rust, ochre and black stains on the linens that couldn’t be explained. And she’d washed out more than one injury’s share of crusted blood.

House Delaney had once been a grand place, Matilda imagined, exploring it. It was stately, even handsome once. But it had fallen into darkness and disrepair, becoming a home to years of madness—and, for some time, only men. When Mr Delaney the younger was a boy, however, Matilda imagined it was a very dignified home. The place had been fashioned skillfully and furnished by someone who loved it. But now all of the furnishings were worn and mildewed, shabby and dusty. While she wasn’t tasked with repairing chairs, the cooking, cleaning, changing of linens, washing up, and the general drudgery of running a house was all left to Matilda.

Matilda was, in fact, relieved to be away from Aunt Clara and her many children. She’d not known solitude and now she was awash in it. It suited her. She found deep gratification in spending her days by herself, tending to the house, learning it, familiarizing herself with its many ghosts. As a gift to the house, she fashioned a new broom and swept years’ worth of cobwebs and dirt and decay out of the corners, starting east and moving clockwise. She burned aromatics in every room to take away the stink of disregard. Poor old house, suffering that neglect.

She also rubbed every cooking pot with fresh tallow, cleaned the looking glass in the parlor, and polished every single bit of flooring that she had access to. She oiled the decorative woodwork and the banisters. She took the threadbare cushions from the divan out to the back garden and savagely beat the dust out of them until she was overcome by sneezing. It was more care than the house had seen in … ever. When she finally finished, she upheld the traditions her mother had taught her and spoke to each room, sprinkling salt across the threshold of every door and window.

Every other day of that first week, when she wasn’t cleaning, Matilda went to the market for supper provisions, exiting out the back garden like Brace had shown her. The freedom was exhilarating but fleeting, as she had no one to share it with. She had no friends and the very few townspeople who looked her way did more than briefly glance at her scarred face before looking away quickly.

Back in the kitchen, with the hearth blazing and a lamp to light her work, Matilda made a crude but filling stew of parsnips, onions and oysters, supplemented by various herbs and roots she’d foraged back in the garden at her aunt’s and carried in a burlap sack to House Delaney. When the soup was finished, she took a small bowl of stew and a sliver of skillet bread her into her small quarters, leaving the lamps burning for Mr Brace’s supper.

Her room, a tiny space carved out for her, was a storage pantry off what must have once been a comely atrium. The room was just big enough for some straw batting and a clump of old blankets salvaged from Aunt Clara (and the deep recesses of the Delaney linen closet), but it was hers. There was a heavy curtain to serve as a door, keeping the drafts at bay, and Mr Brace had fixed up the small coal stove in one corner. Considering that Matilda had been sharing a room and a bed with her many cousins most of her conscious life, her quarters at the Delaney house seemed luxurious. She was quite content to eat and listen to the sounds of the house.

She’d already snuffed out the candle and shut the grate to the stove tightly when she heard the men return. Mr Brace was squawking loudly about something—a problem, a blasted problem, a ship?—to nothing beyond a grumble from Mr Delaney. She heard chair legs shuffling across the floor and a clatter of footsteps, the kettle lid being replaced on the oyster stew, the murmur of voices, and then, she heard only quiet as the men ate. No one came to complain and there wasn’t the sound of a poisoning, so she reckoned the stew was fine.

Approaching footsteps woke her not long after she drifted off. She pulled the quilt over her head and tried to be very still, as she’d done at Aunt Clara’s on several occasions. She heard the soft rustle of the curtain being lifted.

“Yeh, she’s in here,” Mr Brace said, calling back over his shoulder, not attempting to be quiet at all. “You awake, girl? Mr Delaney has a question for you. Get up now.”She peeked out from the blanket without much revealing herself, as she was in her sleeping gown and this was not at all a proper time to chat. Brace was just a shadow, lit from behind by the fire she’d left burning in the kitchen. She couldn’t see his eyes but he could see hers, it seemed. He saw when her gaze flitted to her clothes, hanging on a nail near the stove.

“Of course, yes,” he said, closing the curtain, “but be quick. Won’t take long. Can’t wait until morning.”

She rushed to get her dress over her head and over her nightdress, holding her breath the whole time. Even as she buttoned and secured her apron, she didn’t breathe. Without time to straighten her hair, she tucked the lot of her plain brown braid into a kerchief. So sloppy, such a mess, right when Mr Delaney wanted to speak to her! He would see her in the light and that would be the end of it, probably.

He’d see right into her skinny body and past her terrible scars, straight to the witch inside. She’d heard things and knew it was true. He had powers. He’d see the herself she kept hidden. Or maybe the scars would be enough to repulse him. Or the stew! Mr Delaney would certainly tell her the soup was shite and command that she and her monstrous face must leave. Then she’d be the girl who wasn’t good enough to care for her cousins, to become a nun, to work as a whore, or even to serve as housemaid to Mad Delaney the younger.

Shuffling quickly through the pantry in unlaced boots, she smoothed her apron as best she could and hurried to the kitchen. While her eyes adjusted to the relatively well-lit kitchen, she saw Mr Delaney. At least, the side and back of him. Blessedly not looking her direction, he reclined with his muddy boots on the hearthstones, smoking from a long pipe and staring into the fire as if he was engaged in a conversation with it.

“Here she is now, James—the Woodruff girl,” Brace said, by means of introduction, sitting at the table to clean his pipe. She focused on Brace’s upturned pipe in favor of looking at anything that might look back at her.

In her corner of her eye, James Delaney lifted his head almost imperceptibly but didn’t turn in the girl’s direction. “Milly, is it? Mildred?” he grumbled, his voice deep and jagged.

“Tilly, James,” Brace corrected. “Matilda Woodruff. Clara’s girl that you’ve brought on for the house. She don’t talk much, but ask her anyway.”

Mr Delaney grunted, toeing a log in the fire, trying to coax it into position. “Ah, Clara’s girl, yes.” Something about the way he said it made Matilda think he knew she was not Clara’s girl.  
“Brace says you’ve been going by yourself to market all week, Miss Matilda,” he said, addressing her almost formally, as he stamped out an errant cinder. “Who do you buy from there?”

Now he’d gone and said her name. The horrors! She swallowed dryly and managed to stammer, “Yes, sir, Mr Delaney. The oysters are from … ah, the woman outside Northumberland Arms. The parsnips from—uh, he …“ As she trailed off, Mr Delaney didn’t turn but she saw his posture stiffen slightly. “I’m sorry, sir, I don’t know his name. A man missing his …” She unconsciously touched her cheek right under her right eye.

He didn’t look at her, not even then, but he nodded. “Mm, the farmer Richards. Did he know who you were cooking for? Think very hard. It’s crucial that you recall.”

When she didn’t answer, Mr Delaney all at once and in one motion twisted in his chair and turned to look in the girl’s direction. Every drop blood in her body rushed straight into her face. He is looking, she thought, he sees me. She wanted nothing of that, ever again. Her Aunt Clara had warned her that the Delaneys were sorcerers with the power to turn women into stone just by looking at them.

“So mind yourself,” Clara warned Matilda, “and he won’t do it to you—long as you keep his house right and stay out of his way.”

“Why’re you shaking, girl?” Mr Brace asked, gruffly, having looked away from his pipe at Mr Delaney’s movement. “Nothing to be afraid of here. Just a simple question he’s askin’ you.” He amplified his voice, as if her scars made her hard of hearing: “Does … anyone … know you in LON-DON?”

She must look so simple to them both. At least Mr Delaney was said to be a very clever man. And Mr Brace, old as he was, must have had some wit to him. Matilda shook her head and said nothing, which—in her limited experience—seemed to be the best way to answer most men.

Mr Delaney also said nothing, but she could feel his eyes on her. Her breath abandoned her and she fixed her eyes on a small scuff in the floorboards under the table, the heat of embarrassment showing in her blushing skin. She couldn’t look as he pulled his thick, bandy legs in from resting at the hearth and stood, setting his still-smoking pipe down on the table. He wasn’t a tall man, by most standards, but he was broad. Thick through the shoulders, like a bulldog. He blocked the light from the fire easily and Matilda felt the slight change in temperature, almost as if she was walking through a spirit. Without his coat or hat, though, his profile looked a bit less like a devil and more like a man.

He moved toward Matilda slowly, like he might approach a frightened dog. When close enough to touch her, he did not. She could smell him now, he was so close. He smelled of brandy and sweat and pipe smoke and ash and blood and mud, all at once. Delaney stood still, scrutinizing her long enough that Mr Brace lost interest and once more attended to his pipe.

James Delaney, Mad Delaney the younger, was studying her face, she could tell. Too bad for him that he hadn’t seen her clearly before he’d took her on. She could imagine the disgust that must be in his eyes—a look she’d seen before, on others. Her hideousness had surely put him off. The knife scars from getting on the wrong side of an old mark of her aunt’s. Her too-large, hooded eyes; her ruddy cheeks; her crooked, freckled nose. The burn marks on her neck. Matilda kept her eyes on that scuff on the floor as Delaney studied the ruined planes of her face. As long as he kept his focus on the surface of her, maybe he wouldn’t dig deeper.

In a fluid motion that she didn’t expect, he lifted his hand to her ear and took off her wrinkled, frilled cap.

“Ah,” he murmured knowingly. He used the same hand that was holding her cap to gently rub a coarse thumb across the mark on her left cheek, under her eye. “Mm,” he confirmed. She flinched without thinking and shut her eyes against what she expected to be some kind of violence.

There were rumors. He’d torn a man’s heart out. Killed a man in the landings one night, using a curved blade. A real London cannibal, Aunt Clara warned. Matilda wasn’t sure if she should believe her.

Delaney was so close that it was almost as if the two of them were in a bubble together—a gloomy diving bell. Matilda felt the room darken around them as he said, in a hushed low tone, “When you were but a girl, yes? Hm?”

His thumb moved down to the scar that cut through her upper lip so deeply that the blade was stopped only by her first set of teeth. It had healed well, thanks to an herbal poultice that Tilly came up with herself, but it was still a nasty scar.

“Look at me now,” Mr Delaney said, very quietly and not without patience. “Come now.”

He spoke to Matilda almost like a pet he was fond of, summoning her attention, so she responded obediently and opened her eyes. She cautiously looked to his face, expecting his expression to be disgust. Instead, she found that he was looking at her with a mixture of something unfamiliar, something like kinship. Almost a reverence. Eventually, they made eye contact and she immediately turned her eyes back to the floor. His thumb moved across her lip until his hand was gently cupping her chin, lifting her face back upward. For a devil, he didn’t seem unkind. She hadn’t even turned to stone yet.

“No, Miss Matilda, I said to look at me. Look at my face. Tell me what we share.”

She took him in for the first time in earnest: his set, scruffy jaw, covered in a short, ruddy beard; his notably full lips beneath a fine nose. Then, as if an attempt to be less handsome, a white scar marred the skin around his left eye. His eyes were fixed on her: deep-set hazel irises and crinkled, sun-beaten skin flanking his outer lashes. Another scar on his right brow. He’d been through it, that was sure. But he was still the most handsome man that Matilda had ever seen, she thought, a bolt of embarrassment running through her.

Maybe this was what it was to be turned to stone. She met his focus with her own eyes and guessed, hardly louder than a whisper, “Scars? Sir?”

His eyes moved back down to her mouth and he let go of her chin. Ah, there. He looked away just enough. He’d seen deeper than her scars, she was sure of it. Was it a flash of recognition? Did he know her?

His voice low, Mr Delaney agreed, “Yes, scars.” He handed Matilda back her frilled cap, taking a step away from her.

His stare penetrated her as he added very deliberately: “Scars. And we are alone in the world.”


	3. Like a Candle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A little (off-screen) hurt and a little on-screen comfort, on two planes!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here there be sexy times, so if you're not of the age or disposition to engage with a fairly chaste description of 3rd base shenanigans, please look away!

CHAPTER 2: Like a Candle

"And we are alone in the world."

Mr Delaney's statement was like a refrain in Matilda's mind. She wasn't sure if it was revelatory in any fashion—she'd long known that she was alone in the world—but she'd never had it pointed out so bluntly. Also, "we" are alone in the world, he'd said. "We." Him, but also her. Both orphans, of course, but him, with a servant and a sister and business cohorts and an ever-rotating cast of villains (who also might be the very same as his business cohorts)? With her confusion came a small but thrilling amount of camaraderie, too: He'd joined the two of them together by saying "we."

She hung onto it all week, like a line from a poem. It was all she had to hang on to as she did her daily tasks, anyway. Thoughts of what Mr Delaney could have meant. Earnestly, aside from that moment in the kitchen, he was quite absent from the household sphere that she inhabited so duly.

The second time he seemed to notice her, if one might call it that, was when she tended to him after he came home blind drunk and bleeding heavily.

Mr Brace had already retired for the evening, tucked neatly into his nightly stupor of brandy, unable or unwilling to hear James return home. Mr Delaney, to his credit, could act as a bit of a ghost in the house he'd been raised in. He could move about without making a board creak, especially when going up the stairs. But, although Mr Delaney had no problem getting up to his rooms in the attic without making a sound, he seemed entirely incapable of navigating the kitchen without kicking something over. Almost as if it were on purpose, like he was imposing his will on the entire household. If he were restless, then something should suffer for it.

Tilly, in her pantry, woke to the sound of that suffering: a rattle across floorboards, like a bucket was being kicked in a non-proverbial way. She put her coat over her nightdress, because she had no house robe, and tucked her hair into the same decrepit cap that she'd found with the linens. She hurried to the kitchen without putting her boots on, which she regretted as soon as her bare feet touched the kitchen floorboards. There was the bucket she'd heard—the ash can. It was upended at the hearth, the soot creating a small cloud of particulates. Lit dimly by the waning fire, she found the master of the house and the kicker of the bucket, Mr Delaney, fumbling while he struggled to pull off one of his boots. He looked up sharply when she entered the room and she froze, as was her natural reaction to Mr Delaney looking at her. Bleary-eyed, he lost his focus on her immediately and merely grunted in acknowledgment. She was no threat, his expression said. She was one of his.

Tilly moved to him and helped right him on the chair where he'd unevenly planted himself. Mr Delaney smelled like a sewer and a brewery at the same time, somehow, and sported a deep gash at his hairline. He lifted his hand to her like a sad offering, showing her his bloody, scuffed knuckles.

Tilly gently stayed his hand and leaned his shoulder against her hip as she bent to remove his boot for him. Now to take the thorn from the lion's paw, she thought. The boot was quite stuck on, it seemed, or his left foot less eager to leave it. In the awkward pull for her to separate foot from boot, Mr Delaney steadied himself by wrapping his arm around Matilda's hips. She again froze for a moment, straightening her spine slightly, with the boot yet to be removed. Then, she relaxed as he nestled against her coat.

Mr Delaney lifted his other arm to encircle her completely: coat and nightgown and all. A clumsy, childish embrace. Well, then. That was something. Matilda's eyes widened in the dimness as she looked down at the top of Mr Delaney's bloodied scalp. The instinct to hold him, too—to cradle his sandy, battered head in her arms and soothe him—immediately overtook her, but thankfully, her shyness prevailed. She stood still and left his other boot on while he clung to her, resting.

Of course, with just that brief, drunken contact, she loved him. It was a bit like misjudging a step over a puddle and falling into a very deep ravine, her love. A million thoughts ran through her at once. We are alone in the world. Also, she was a monster, herself, wasn't she? Who better to love a monster than another monster?

But then, she reasoned, so many women (and a few men) loved Mr Delaney. Not all of them seemed monstrous. Tilly didn't imagine that Mr Delaney had told all of them that they, too, were alone in the world, just like him. It was a shockingly intimate confession, to acknowledge the loneliness of another monster. Even if one of the monsters was so handsome, so mysterious.

He traded on this. Tilly didn't know it yet, but James knew very well his effect on people. Women, specifically. Everyone pretended to hate him, of course; they called him any number of terrible names. Some of them cursed him beyond hell, too—but they all wanted him in their way. And he could rely on it, figure it into his calculations. He knew how to play admirers for their desires. He knew how to angle his words and deeds just enough to needle those who wanted him, but not enough to satisfy them, not enough to kill their desire. That desire was an asset. A crucial tension to uphold. James had a use for that. He had a use for everything.

But, at least up until this moment, he didn't have much of a use for Tilly beyond what she did for the house.

When he clung to her skirts like a child in the kitchen, he was exposed in a way he would not have allowed when sober. In turn, she didn't move to care for him immediately. She waited for a sign. Maybe he'd pass out or push her away. When she eventually unentangled herself from his sloshy embrace so she might tend to his injuries, he seemed in a fugue state. His eyes were open and half-focused, but following her movements.

Tilly ignored him as she gathered a few dried herbs and whisked them into a small bowl of clean water to wash him with. She stirred the lot clockwise, silently mouthing the words her mother had taught her. It was only the first step in treating an open wound, as she'd done a hundred times with her young cousins. When his head was mended (the cut was more superficial than she'd first guessed), she patiently began cleaning the blood from Mr Delaney's knuckles. There'd been a fight, then. She imagined he'd won, but couldn't bring herself to ask. He stayed still, right where she'd leaned him against the table, as she worked. He looked at her mutely, almost as if her ministrations were happening to someone else.

Once he was sorted and his fist wrapped in bandages, Tilly brought him a big bowl of lukewarm stew that was still resting in the embers of the fire. About to excuse herself, she put a log within his reach, in case he needed to sober himself by the fire before he could make it up the stairs to his room. He came to a bit, grumbled appreciatively and stodgily tucked into the stew. She moved away from him, ready to return to her bed, satisfied that she'd done right by him even if he wouldn't recall it in the morning.

James caught her elbow, firmly, before she could get far. And he spoke: "Bread."

Tilly nodded, still happy to be of use to him, and brought the last of the cloth-wrapped bread. He nodded in acknowledgment.

There was a beat and he then added, "Salt."

Not unfamiliar with the manner of drunken men from her time living with Aunt Clara, Tilly obliged him, bringing him the salt pig. He grunted and nodded again in thanks.

"Good," he approved, as if she were a turnspit dog about to retire.

Tilly wondered if that was it, then. She awaited any further instruction, studying his slumped posture as he focused on his meal. What else might he ask for? Perhaps some butter? Neither of them were much in the way of conversationalists, it seemed, and never was it more clear than as she stood there silently and watched him eat.

She wished for a lamp to catch all his many details while she had the chance. The way his jaw moved, chewing slowly and rhythmically. Under his beard, the way his throat moved when he swallowed. Tilly was captivated and thrilled for the opportunity to look at him whilst he wasn't looking at her. Feeding him, caring for him, this was her job, she reckoned. Admiring him could only help her efforts, because anything done with a loving heart would run superior to handiwork done by the most masterful tradesman. By the looks of it, she'd done her job well. He didn't even dismiss her while he chewed the last of the bread. Maybe he thought she was good company.

When he finally stood after pushing away the bowl, James had to balance himself with both hands against the flat of the tabletop. Tilly made a motion to help him, but he lifted his bandaged hand once again.

"I've got it," he grumbled. He was suddenly changed: no longer a drunken child; now, he was a man with a headache. And it was very late indeed. He straightened to his full height, markedly more sober than he was when he sat down.

"Back to bed you go, Miss Matilda," he added, low in tone, once again the master of the house. He didn't look at her again, especially now that his eyes weren't crossing. He nodded to himself and added, flatly, "Thank you for the care."

So that's what a Delaney sounds like when he's gracious, Tilly thought, gleeful even as she was being dismissed. She'd witnessed the devil Delaney being fond. Probably no women in the history of women had ever heard such eloquent kindness from a Delaney. Perhaps it was even an apology of sorts! Fighting back a smile, Tilly tried to work it out in her head as she walked back to bed on frozen feet. Mr Delaney must have crossed a line by embracing her, it seemed, and the graciousness was his way of showing of regret. She dearly hoped he was too drunk to remember it in the morning, though, so she'd still have a job.

* * *

James was not too drunk to remember it in the morning, though, as a matter of fact. Maybe he couldn't recollect each moment entirely, and certainly, his trip home was a blur, but James did remember the gist of his encounter with Miss Matilda in the kitchen. He woke up only a few hours later in the dark of his room, just before sunrise, tangled in blankets in his attic room. His head felt full of rocks and he had the distinct sense that he'd been fighting in his dreams.

The fighting followed him to his dreams rarely. That was for waking hours. Perhaps he was fucking, yes. By the ache in his balls and the rigidity of his sex, it appeared that at least part of his dream life was spent fucking.

He closed his eyes shut to try and hold onto the last whispers of his dream. He was being tended to, very intimately, in his own kitchen. The housemaid, Matilda. Mm. If he could only secure it well enough in his mind, perhaps he could prolong it. Enjoy it properly. Maybe, he thought devilishly, he might even share it. If his mind could find a way to travel to Zilpha across London—across oceans—it could surely make it down two flights of narrow stairs to the pantry by the kitchen.

James breathed in deeply and then out again, repeating the act several times. He felt himself succumbing to the darkness behind his eyelids, but not for sleep. This meditative state was the one he used for spirit travel, among other things. He began to recite the words he knew might help to separate his consciousness from his body, as he'd done many times before. Also something he'd practiced many times, he took himself in his undamaged hand. He slowly began to tend to himself in the flesh, even as his spirit began to traverse its bodily host.

The scene itself was easy enough to conjure. The kitchen. Ash hovering in the still air. A small, dim fire, all rendered in sufficient detail. And then Matilda, the housemaid, pressing into him while she dabbed at the cut on his head. James's body was slumping, but he was warm, comfortable, at ease. Relaxed, fully, and not in the stupor he was. Now, he was present.

In this scene, as in reality, he was soothed by her gentle touch. He recalled his embrace of the young Matilda in as much detail as he could. Then, he began to add new details, manifesting new happenings. He began lengthening the stroke on his hardened flesh, the muscles in his chest and arm tightening. Yes, he could easily find his satisfaction here, in the kitchen with Tilly. It was just a matter of making the mental imagery—her skirts, her form, the table at his back—more tangible to him.

It wasn't so far to travel, really. Nor difficult. Although he was well practiced in this sort of movement, each and every trip was exhilarating. The places he might go, if he only concentrated hard enough, if he only willed it into being. The veils between planes were much thinner than most people imagined, and he was happy to exploit that fact in dark hours.

In his increasingly detailed fantasy, James sent his hands, slowly and with purpose, under Tilly's coat and nightdress, up the back of her bare legs. He felt the downy softness of the skin on the back of her thighs. He was touching the most unbroken parts of her, now. She would let him, because he was in control. He even summoned a spike of surprise by finding an absence of undergarments to do away with at the end of his hands' journey. She was bare for him. Ready. Waiting for him—silent and still, like a warm bath.

Downstairs, Matilda moaned in her sleep. In her dream, Mr Delaney was holding her before him while still seated at the table. He was looking up at her and meeting her eyes in unbroken contact as his hands moved under her night clothes. She was already aching and wet between the legs for him, for Mr Delaney. He was no devil. No devil would touch her so reverently. She might be ashamed of her body's response, if it weren't private, if it weren't locked in her mind. There is no room for shame in dreams. We are alone in the world, he'd said. "We," he'd said. She lowered herself softly onto his hand, urging him to enter her with his incongruously elegant fingers.

James had intended to stay with Tilly only briefly. A quick trial to see if he could penetrate the housemaid's dreams and satisfy himself. Selfish, perhaps, but he'd seen how she looked at him and it made him restless. In and out, with her no worse for wear. The doe would have a harmless naughty dream that she probably wouldn't even recall.

Once he was inside her mind, however, once they were sharing the same twilight space, he gathered that this kind of congress was desirable to her, as well. How quickly she responded. No shyness in this girl, not here, in this liminal space. How she opened to him, slick and hot. It made him wonder: Did she see him as he was, flesh made phantom, or had he managed to stumble into a dream of her own, already in progress? Was he controlling this, as he had so many times with Zilpha? Or was he a player in this, or the orchestrator?

The thought startled him—his fingers were stroking the inside of her warm center in the fantasy, while also wrapped around his cock in reality, both sensations deliciously real but simultaneously unreal, transcendent—and he abruptly climaxed, despite himself.

Hm. Confounding. That's not normally how things went for him in this practice, he thought dumbly. He could feel the warmth and wetness of her on his fingers, and he could see the light from the fire catch the transition of the smooth skin of her cheek to the lurid scar across her mouth. Tilly had responded with such resolve. She'd made her body known to his hand before he'd even willed it, and now he'd gone and finished himself off. James quickly withdrew himself from the ethereal plane, determinedly passing through layers of semi-consciousness until he was fully returned, slightly winded and vaguely unsettled, to his tangled blankets. Did she know he had visited? Was she aware of him? If so, would she recall the episode upon waking?

These thoughts absolutely hounded James Delaney for the approximately sixty seconds it took before he again passed the subliminal boundary of sleep. The sensation was not unlike falling into a deep ravine.

**Next Week: Chapter 3: Like a Horseshoe**


	4. Like a Horseshoe

Chapter 3: Like a Horseshoe

“A housemaid? Brace says you’ve hired _a maid_ , James? Is it true?” Lorna’s face was a mix of skeptical bemusement and studied nonchalance. She was annoyed but didn’t want him to know it, so she sat petulantly back against the divan and surveyed the room. It did look slightly less gloomy and markedly more clean. But still. In principle alone! She addressed it directly, asking, “How has it come to be that I am a weakness, but a housemaid is not?”

James stopped pouring his father’s third wife a brandy at that comment. Why Lorna Bow must remain such a phenomenal pain in his arse was obvious—she was now, unfortunately, a Delaney and therefore marked by the crown and the company both. But why he allowed her to check in on him from time to time was a mystery, even to him, even yet. Best to keep her keen, he supposed. She was of some use, legally speaking, and Lorna’s prodigious wit did have its merits. But the lip. The never-ending disapproval and snide remarks about his management of his own house. James sighed heavily and looked at her with consternation.

“Do you want the brandy or not?” he grumbled. “Who I hire is no concern of yours, Ms. Bow.”

“MISSUS Delaney—by law,” she shot back in defiance, out of reflex more than anything else. This again. Did James just roll his eyes as he looked toward the exit?, she wondered. Infuriating! Lorna eyed the drink and reconsidered her tone, “It is your home, I suppose. And yes, I’d like that brandy, thank you."

James finished pouring and handed it to her gruffly before sitting opposite her. The elegant glass had looked ridiculous in his week-old bandaged hand and he was eager to change the subject.

“Why have you come today?” he asked resignedly, reaching for his own inelegant goblet of brandy.

Lorna ignored his question completely in favor of glancing in the general direction of the kitchen. She grinned widely as she said, “Well, I’d like to meet her.”

The look on James’s face indicated that introduction would not happen. Lorna pressed further, asking, “Is she young … or old?”

Matilda happened to be at the market, right that moment. He’d sent her out with strict instructions to deliver a bottle to Old One-Eyed Richards as a payoff for something. With this knowledge, that Lorna wouldn’t find the girl in the kitchen, James relaxed a bit. He remained silent, a stern frown on his face. Encouraged, Lorna forged on even further: “Old, I’d imagine. What’s her name? How much are you paying her to keep house? Could she fix up a room here for me? Or is it still necessary for me to hide away in my garret near the theater? Really, am I permitted to finally stay in a house that is half mine?”

Nothing from James, still. Just that stoic frown and a clenched jaw. A bit of a glare. Lorna sipped her brandy and gleefully made a game of it, looking around the room. She decided to lighten her tone: “I hope you’re not paying her in diamonds, James. Because if you are, you’re paying her far too much. The front steps are covered in mud—or does she not do any labor outside of the parlor?”

James felt the quick heat of anger bubbling up in his chest at that remark. He didn’t like Lorna talking about housekeeping or Matilda, something and someone whom she knew nothing about and would know nothing about. He could see very well how their meeting would play out: Lorna would get broody about the young girl with the scars. He’d seen how she was toward the street children she’d encountered, and this was another poor soul she’d try to save. Lorna was nothing if not a friend to monsters. She’d spy the innocent maid and find a way to mother her, clucking away about her marks and her tragic life. Then, she’d endear herself to the girl and turn her against James. She was also likely to cut Tilly to ribbons, if she was at all jealous of her being at the house that she clearly felt she should run. Further, the actress’s famously loose tongue might result in Matilda knowing more than she ought about his dealings, which was a danger to them all.

“Enough,” James barked. Lorna sniffed and set her empty glass down, pleased to have gotten a rise out of him. He collected himself so that when he spoke, it was much more even in tone: “To answer your question, Mrs Delaney, the maid is not a weakness because there are none who would mourn her and—more importantly—none who would even notice her absence should she disappear. She is not a famous actress. She does not swan about town … unlike other people who have been instructed to keep a low profile but cannot do that without a fine new hat with a matching veil.”

Lorna straightened up her posture on the divan and reached up to verify that her new hat was still canted perfectly on her hair. “Oh, this?” She was pleased that he’d noticed, but she didn’t to give him the satisfaction that she’d registered his cutting remark. She took a deep breath and sighed, shaking her head at him with a small smile. “I’m surprised you noticed. This is my lowest profile, James.”

* * *

That same night, much later, marked the third encounter between James Delaney and his housemaid, Matilda Woodruff. Fourth, if he counted the dream they shared. This time, he used his intimate knowledge of the house in his favor. Not even half drunk, with all his various faculties, he was able to pass down three flights of stairs, steal through the kitchen and duck into the pantry, where Matilda was sleeping, without making a sound.

Tilly woke to the curtain of her tiny quarters being drawn back, the shock causing her to bolt upright. The light of a single candle blinded her in the darkness, while also illuminating the candle’s owner. She must have been a sight in the glow of the candle, with no cap on, her hair wildly escaping its braid, her threadbare nightdress askew and exposing her bony, scarred shoulder. Out of dumb panic, she grabbed for her coat, hanging on a nail above her, but the person holding the candle smartly raised it to reveal his face. At the same time, he made a sound that was part polite throat-clearing announcement and part animal approval of what he’d found.

It was Mr Delaney that held a candle inside her room. She drew the blankets up to cover herself and froze. When her eyes adjusted to the glare of the candle and she saw, fleetingly, that Mr Delaney was in his nightshirt and barefoot, his chest and arms covered in frightful, thick, black marks, the likes of which Tilly had never seen. Her heart, still racing from the sudden awakening, skipped several beats as she held her breath.

Mr Delaney crouched low to deposit the candleholder on a shelf, and Tilly sensed a cloudy portent of what might come next wash over her. He was here to use her body, like men would use her aunt’s body, like a man would use any whore’s body. He was here to put her to use as a woman. This thought split her in two as if it were a sword: she was half mortified, half excited. She’d dreamt about his touch, but in the safety of her dream, there was no chance of pain or dismissal.

Tilly grew up hearing the sounds of men using Aunt Clara when she was working as a whore. Messy, dark noises that sounded like blows being dealt. However, unlike Clara, Tilly had no skills that a whore might employ, no knowledge that someone like Mr Delaney might hire for the evening. Further, in effect, he already owned her. He could have any woman to rent without the burden of having to see her the next day over breakfast porridge.

Unless … yes—perhaps this is it, Tilly thought dismally, groggy with sleep. She was to be used and dismissed. Sent out. She’d invited this when she tended to him like a wife. She’d be cast out, or, if the worst of the rumors about him were true, perhaps she’d be used and turned into stew.

But, she remembered fondly, he’d said they were alone in the world. She remembered his words and his touch on her face, she remembered his embrace as she cared for his wounds, so lay back down in her bed. He’d probably not chop her into bits. That wasn’t the way he wanted to use her body, most likely. That wasn’t the best way to use a woman’s body, and she intuited that Mr Delaney knew several ways, some of which might even be somewhat pleasurable. He’d held her hips that time, like a man might embrace a wife. Why not again? So mote it be, she thought, and tried to calm her breath.

Mr Delaney, for his part, seemed ignorant of the opposing forces battling in her mind. He had a dilemma and a mission of his own. When he blew out his candle, he all but disappeared into the dark, crawling over her matted, thin bedding and then over her shaking, thin body until he was separating her from the coldness of the pantry wall. She shivered as he silently lifted the ragged blankets she’d hidden herself under and slipped into her bed.

The patchwork quilt closest to her body was just big enough to barely cover them both. Tilly turned away from him, curling onto her side with her heart pounding in anticipation. But when he moved, also laying on his side, it was to put his arms around her again, like he had in the kitchen. Except … it was different this time. Deliberate. She lifted her head in surprise and, while it was raised, James snaked an arm beneath. He slung his outer arm over her shoulders, quilts and all, and pulled her into the hollow his curled body made. Rigid, she waited for what would come next.

Would he take her from behind, she worried—like a dog? Would it hurt? Is this how it happened with women and men always? She squeezed her eyes shut and held her breath, her whole body shivering.

A small, soft sound came from him, not quite a moan and not quite a growl. More like a deep sigh that a horse might give when being forced to lay down.

“Shush, Tilly,” Mr Delaney murmured, but in the tiny room and with his face so near to her ears, his voice filled up her head. She’d never heard him call her Tilly—it was “Miss Matilda,” if he called her anything at all. The hand nearest her face shifted until his fingers lightly brushed down the length of her nose and across her tightly clenched lips. He whispered, soothing her, “I have you. Shhh.”

After that, there was no escalation. She waited for it to happen, but there was nothing new. Just slow breathing from him and the weight of his muscular arm over her. His broad body enveloping her small frame. They were like two animals curled up by a fire. Mr Delaney was taking deep, long breaths before she realized that he was asleep, and that sleeping was his only intention.

Tilly, however, was frozen in place, barely breathing. Her cheeks were hot and flushed, and she was overly aware of every point of contact where his body touched hers. There were so many points of contact: his biceps and her shoulders, at his warm breath against the back of her neck, their legs both bent at the knees and his tucked into the curve of her own bent legs. At their feet, even, as his bare feet clasped her stockinged feet between his. She felt the warmth of his body against the whole of her back and all of her behind, pressed close. She imagined his body being so close to her own intimate parts, like in the dream, and what small breaths she was capable of taking became even shallower.

She feared she’d be like that all the night through. He’d notice her wakefulness, which would ruin everything, and he’d leave her right where she lay. Nothing of the sort happened. In fact, Mr Delaney very graciously continued to soothe her in small ways: rubbing their feet together, shushing her softly, rubbing his thumb softly against her jawbone. It was almost as if he were comforting an injured dog, and it worked. Eventually, she also drifted off—a small miracle, considering that it was the first time she’d slept with a man. There was safety to be found in his arms. She felt protected, surrounded by him in that den, as if she was a vixen and James was a tod—which is what she dreamed about, when her sleep was deep enough. The two of them were foxes, with thick winter coats, sleeping in a warm burrow, lined with pine boughs. A scene so tranquil that she was not even bothered when the thin stream of sunlight from the world outside was obscured by the shadow of a massive bird of prey.

When she woke, it was still dark in the back garden, and one of Mr Delaney’s hands was fully cupped around her breast. He seemed to be still sleeping, so it appeared this contact was without intent or even awareness. Tilly was aware, though, and acutely so. As soon as she reconciled that this was not part of the dream she’d been enjoying, as soon as she realized that she was sleeping in a bed with legendary James Keziah Delaney, her employer, and a man of fairly ill reputation, it was as if all of her nerve endings fired at once. Not only was Tilly unaccustomed to the feeling of someone’s hand on her person, his hand was on her breast, softly kneading it. She started to shake again. Had it already happened? Her deflowering? Could it happen that she was so asleep that she didn’t even know it was happening? Did she miss it all?

Her quivering must have woken him, because he stopped his kneading. He was motionless as he collected his thoughts. What a magnificent sleep he’d had, with such calm dreams. Warm, sunbathed safety. A far change from the terrors that usually attended his slumber—unless, of course, he authored his own dreams. There he was, holding his housemaid’s breast in his hand, feeling more comfortable in a pantry than he had in a bed in some years. Even better, the soft, round breast in his hand was punctuated by a stiff nipple.

He fought back a moan at the girl’s involuntary bodily response. How long had it been since anything had been a first? Since a touch had been pure and sweet? Was it Zilpha, many years ago?

Ahhh, no. Better not to think of such things. She was not Zilpha. And he was not her half brother. This held no complications. Unable to help himself retain any sort of plausible deniability, he did as a red-blooded man does to a woman whose breast was ripening under his touch—he rubbed this callused thumb across the fabric of her nightdress, right over the tightening cluster of nerve and skin that immediately responded in kind.

James was pleased at the sensation of how sweet and full her breast felt in his hand. There wasn’t much to Miss Matilda’s slight form, but that area her body had some fat on it, and he was grateful for it. The tactile firmness of her young flesh added to the intensifying headiness of knowing he was probably the first to touch it that way. He was stone sober, yet James felt a buzzy, warm sense of mischief toward the girl. Especially after that dream, and how she’d felt on his fingers. He could show her the ways. He could open new doors for her, and be the first to walk though them. Undoubtedly, she’d not seen much kindness in her short life. Neither had he, but he’d only just recently come into a position where his influence could result in any kind of kindness. And what better recipient than this young woman, soft and sweet in his hands?

“Easy now, girl,” he murmured into the tangle of dark hair at the back of her neck. “I have you.”

James boldly increased the pressure against Tilly’s nipple while urging soft sounds of encouragement next to her ear. She took slow, deep breaths that seemed to fill up her whole body. He massaged her more urgently still, alternating between slipping his fingers between her breasts and then moving back to her nipple to grasp it between his thumb and first finger. He curled the arm that was still cradling her head until he could draw her even closer into his body, pressing himself against her backside. Through his palm, he could feel her heart beating, strong and determined, inside her ribcage. Tilly’s breath quickened and the sound her sublimely quiet whimpers sent a rush of blood to the ache between his legs. She was responding exactly how he wanted her to. Not like a wanton wraith, not like a practiced professional—like a sweet, shy lamb.

His thumb stopped passing over and back across her breast lazily in favor of using it and the middle knuckle of his first finger to pinch what he imagined, in great detail, was probably the prettiest and pinkest point of her body. He pinched it lightly, holding the nipple firmly but not without gentleness. He gradually increased the pressure more and more until Tilly yelped in pleasure. All right then, there it was!, he thought. That’s what he wanted: any kind of inarguable response from her. That would serve as his permission to spoil her innocence.

James abruptly removed his hand from her chest and placed it atop his own head, scratching at his scalp. He exhaled forcefully, a bit out of frustration and sexual want. He hadn’t realized he’d been holding his own breath in concentration. He also turned his body so she wouldn’t feel his cock pressing against her bum. There was no hiding how much further he could go, if he wanted it to be so. But there would be time for that. No need to rush.

Tilly, confused by his withdrawal, missed his touch immediately. Her blush burned to volcanic levels inside her skin. What had she done wrong? Why had he stopped?

Neither of them moved for a bit: James trying to suss out the best course of action to take next; Tilly waiting for divine inspiration to tell her how to make him take her in his hand again.

Well, only barely a response, he blustered internally. She wasn’t exactly encouraging him, but she wasn’t fighting him off, either. Encouragement or flight: those were responses he knew how to interpret, that he knew how to use. But that soft yelp and then her stillness?

“Mr Delaney sir,” Tilly whispered, so quietly, so carefully, that she sounded frightened. He almost kissed her neck out of gratitude that she hadn’t addressed him by his Christian name, like all the other women in his life who assumed more intimacy than their relationship afforded, but he stopped himself in time. He didn’t respond but she continued anyway, in that same small voice: “Am I to be dismissed?”

This is how it would happen, she was increasingly sure. She didn’t know how to move or look or how to touch a man’s body, or even how to respond to a man’s touch, and clearly she’d done it wrong even in her reception of his touch. What could he want from her, a wretched orphan who didn’t know what to do. He would quickly regret this—and, embarrassed by her childishness, cast her out from House Delaney. Perhaps they were not alone in the world together, after all.

James sighed and rubbed at his eyes, willing his cock to settle itself, despite being separated from sure bliss by only the thin fabric of his own nightshirt and her night dress.

His conflict was strong and his guides were silent. He could show her how to touch him, maybe—how to work her own body, if he was feeling generous. Or, he could just take her like his whore. He could make her sweet body an extension of his own, for his pleasure; he could ruin and ravage her like a lion, devour her tender flesh, scars and all. He could ensure that she wouldn’t walk straight for some time and that she’d never not feel him inside of her. He could fill her up with his seed, plant it so deeply that not even her mother’s knowledge could rid her of his bastard. He could be a monster to her, the devil that she was promised. He had that power, however he wielded it, and he had that capability, history had shown.

But for her voice. That innocent question, coming from her. Ah, the doe. She expected him to use her and then cast her aside like rubbish. If he had anything left of a heart, it might have broken a bit for her in that moment, at that question, coming from that sweet, sad, frightened creature under his protection.

He resolved his racing mind quickly and sat up in her small bed, in her cramped quarters, nearly cracking himself in the skull on a bent nail. He’d not be the monster, at least not tonight. In her eyes, he was the man of the house—good, kind and strong—and he would remain so. Despite the nagging suspicion that his father’s ghost was still bumping around in his house and occasionally in his head. His mother’s spirit was all shut up in her old room, not speaking to him about this dilemma. What might his mother think of him if he treated Tilly like prey? If he treated her as Horace had treated her, Salish?

“Are you—? Of course not,” he said flatly. “You belong here, in my house, Matilda.”

Mr Delaney grumbled something incoherent to himself and then whipped back the quilts. He crawled out of her bed and away from her quarters as quickly and quietly as he’d entered, but without the light of a candle to show him the way. The curtain fell behind him like a tragic play had just ended.


	5. Like a Corkscrew

Chapter 4: Like a Corkscrew

Brace twisted the scarf around his neck and pulled on his cap, stopping in the front hall to paw through the outgoing letters that had been left for him to deliver. He did not look amused—not by the recipients’ addresses and not by the letters themselves. He’d only meant to step out on his own errands, not play letter carrier for James—but here he was, mentally rerouting his course so he could play house boy to another generation of Delaney. 

Matilda noticed Mr Brace and his crossness only peripherally. She was caught up in her own thoughts of the night before while she pulled the rug that ran from the parlor to the base of the stairwell. She’d spent the morning thoroughly mortified as she pored over every terrible detail in her mind: Mr Delaney, scandalous but somehow familiar in his nightshirt, with those tattoos, his touch on her body, the hotness of his breath on her neck. How’d she manage to ruin everything? She wasn’t sure who she was more angry with: herself or Mr Delaney. He’d essentially just toyed with her before he wandered off like she was nothing to him. Which, she surmised, she was—nothing. She reasoned that her clothes were too ragged, her breasts were too small, her skin too rough, her hips too bony, her bed too cold, her face too ugly. She was too much of the wrong things and not enough of the right things. That thought echoed through the house like a banshee wail. Was she just another ugly, unloved thing to gather dust and fall to further ruin in his domain?

Mr Brace picked one letter up and scrutinized it dourly before looking in Matilda’s direction with great irritation.

“Dammit, girl, must you kick up dust like that right exactly where I stand?” He waved the letter at her dismissively. “Can’t you clean in the parlor? Shoo, now.”

He was hungover. Brace was always hungover. He was either hungover—or he was drinking. Sometimes he was sick, which meant he was hungover and drinking at the same time. He tugged his hat down over his ears and glared at the housemaid, who’d only barely glanced up. Was she deaf, as well as scarred?

She didn’t cut much of a figure, either, the girl—that was sure. She was all eyes and bird bones. Probably would blow away in a proper gale. Brace didn’t know the need in hiring her, anyway. He’d advised against taking in a stray again, adding another mouth to feed, only be sharply reminded that the last mouth that Brace, himself, fed was his own. James was evidently tired of coming home to find cold porridge and a parade of empty bottles. He said he didn’t imagine Brace would do much about the empty bottles, but something must be done about the porridge. 

The way Brace saw it, he was doing a fine enough job of keeping the house up himself, before James OR the girl showed up. Now that the prodigal son had returned, Brace did have a bit more on his plate, but it weren’t nothing he couldn’t handle. He’d lived in that house for over 30 years—he could manage to empty a few basins when they needed done. 

That said, it wasn’t a burden at all to have a hot meal to come back to in the evenings. And it didn’t appear that the girl was a thief. There were tests, you see, that he’d set out for the girl. Temptations. He fully expected to find a bauble or a bottle missing—some bait taken, here or there, something to sell in town—but when he eventually remembered to check whatever tokens he’d left out as a lure, he found them intact, dusted, and prettily arranged.

Perhaps what it came down to was her history. Maybe Brace shouldn’t have shared the information that the girl’s mum and Horace’s wife were acquainted. That appeared to get under James’s skin bit, thick as the boy’s skin may be. Always pining for that woman, he was. Blasted Anna Delaney. She was, point of fact, a fucking witch, a sorceress of the savage sort. Worst of all, she was a pain in the arse. Resentful and sour about all: Brace’s very presence in the house. Horace as a husband, because he wouldn’t handle her with kid gloves. She resented young Zilpha, who’d lost her own mother. Even her own baby, when he came, seemed to be a burden to her. She turned away from her husband and her son in favor of spending the bulk of what limited time she logged in House Delaney completely shut up in her room. Weeping and mewling. Speaking in a language that no one understood and was probably gibberish for effect.

To be honest, the day that Anna was committed to Bedlam was a day of private triumph for Brace. She’d proven herself a danger to the boy, to herself, to the whole damned household, after she tried to kill the child. Once she was in the hospital, Brace had the run of the house in earnest again and life was all the better for it. He was no nursemaid, but he and the staff could manage to get food into the children until they were old enough to be sent off to their respective boarding schools. Make no mistake, Anna’s exile was a triumph for Horace, too. Brace knew he was sick of providing for someone who wouldn’t even let him into her bed to make another son. 

A shard of guilt lingered, though, in Horace. Brace, for his part, felt no such thing. He’d suffered for not telling the world that Mrs Delaney wasn’t only NOT an Italian, but she was a savage from Nootka. She was a spoil of war, even if that war was fought with grand gestures, beads and an ink quill.

Brace knew she was dangerous, even when she arrived as a sullen young woman with a baby in her belly. But, near the end of her time on earth, it was Brace who was the one who had to come to her aid on Horace’s instruction. It was Brace who had to hire the woman to care for Anna and her mysterious ailments at Bedlam, to bring her the medicine that she cried for, that she demanded. When she wasn’t screaming for her infant son, she was screaming for confounded herbs for God knows what reason.

Thus, Brace dutifully went to market and asked the oldest, ugliest woman he could find to tell her where he might find a "wise woman,” someone who knew what herbs to use to for whatever the crazy bint suffered. 

Hypatia—that was the name he was given. Hypatia Woodruff, some woman from the country who knew her way around a garden. A folk healer of sorts, it seemed. She came to market on Fridays, so that’s when Brace went back to find her. Once he explained the situation as best he could through a 3-alarm headache and his impatience, the woman said she would visit the intended recipient of the herbs for free—even at Bedlam. She wasn’t afraid of the horrors that awaited her there, she was used to it. Only afraid of fire, he remembered her joshing. Then, once she knew what Anna suffered from, they could agree on treatment and payment. 

But that was a long time ago.

* * *

That evening, long after Brace had gone off to do his errands and after he’d returned to House Delaney and closed himself up in his quarters with a quart of drink, Matilda realized she’d spent the whole day half-dreading the inevitable sighting of Mr Delaney. In his own house. Even worse than not seeing him, she acknowledged to herself, was not seeing him at all. 

Brace, when he supped in the kitchen, not only did not fire her on Mr Delaney’s behalf, as she half-expected but he seemed mostly unperturbed by her presence, which was an improvement from the morning. Brace had ignored her as he slurped soup, while she sat on a stool in the corner, braiding the garlic she’d bought in the market. When he excused himself to his room, Tilly exhaled and was free to agonize in relative private.

When she’d exhausted herself of things to do in the kitchen—it had never been so clean, not even when newly built—and left out a bowl for Mr Delaney’s supper on the table, Matilda made her way to her pantry with an armful of laundry that had dried on a rack by the hearth. Since she’d last seen Mr Delaney leaving her small bed in the middle of the night, she’d been treading on eggshells, worried about what the events of the night before might lead to. At best, embarrassment and shame, and at worst, her termination and ejection from the house. She couldn’t stop imagining the long walk back to aunt Clara’s. What would she be good for, now?

Perhaps, Tilly considered as she folded the cleaner of her two aprons and placed it into a hall cupboard, she was not to be dismissed just THEN, just after he’d had his hands on her. Not before she’d done her housework and made the evening meal. Brace hadn’t said anything of the sort, but maybe he didn’t know! Anyway, he wouldn’t have been the one to send her packing, either. It would be Mr Delaney, finally descending to his cruelest form. All that tosh about “belonging” at House Delaney was probably just to make her feel better in the moment.

It was simple in her head: Mr Delaney was delaying in firing her because he was a monster. A cruel monster and a devil like his father before him. He’d waited until he knew she loved him, until he’d given her hope that he might love her in return, before he crushed her. Tilly was still twisting herself into knots over that thought as she pushed aside the curtain of her quarters in the pantry. 

As soon as Tilly’s eyes adjusted to the dim interior of her room, she stopped short. Her bed was missing. In fact, all of her personal effects were absent, including her Sunday dress, a small wooden box of buttons and keepsakes, and her spare change of underthings, which had been drying on a cord near the small stove. Almost everything that wasn’t part of House Delaney was gone, as if she’d never even been there. Her mind raced: She’d only left the house for an hour or so, when she went to the market … someone must have removed her things then. But who? She saw a small scrap of folded paper on the cold stove immediately after that thought. She could discern the letters on the front flap well enough to know it was her pet name: T-I-L-L-Y.

The inside of the note was written in small, uneven script—and anyway, she couldn’t read it. Was this the terms of her dismissal? Must be. There was no money near it, which she took to mean that she was being let go without her wages—in her mind, the worst shame a hired maid could suffer. A sob rising in her chest, she found that the only thing left in the small room was her coat. Well. The meaning of that was plain enough, wasn’t it? She pulled her coat on and made her way through the kitchen, fighting back tears as she headed toward the door that would take her out into the front garden instead of the back—the most direct route to the street. She didn’t even give herself a chance to say goodbye to the house or its ghosts.

Tilly swung the door out into the front garden, feeling the burn of shame and a new kind of anger flush through her, only to find herself face to face with Mr Delaney and his broad shoulders, his hand outstretched with a key in it to let himself in. They both stopped abruptly and made—to Matilda’s horror—full eye contact. His facial expression was much as it ever was—lips slightly parted, brows furrowed together, a steely flatness in his eyes—but he lowered his hand and rocked back on his heels slightly. 

Why was Miss Matilda leaving out the front fucking door? Had Brace not made it clear enough to the girl that the only way to leave his home was through the back garden? He was careful to stay stoic, despite his frustration. Expressing any emotion, including the disappointment he genuinely felt at seeing Matilda leave his house in tears, would be a mistake. Especially outside, in view of the street. Eyes were everywhere.

“Mm,” he grunted, parsing the situation. Her coat was on. She, Tilly, was swiping the sleeve of her coat across her face. Breathless and pink in the cheeks. Perhaps she and Brace had had a row. Mr Delaney then posited, in a tone that almost mocked her teariness, “You’re leaving us then, eh?”

At the sight of him, her heart started threatening to choke the words right out of her throat. She stammered, “Sir, my things. I thought …”

Her belongings were gone, yes. That might do it. Something like recognition passed briefly across James’s face as she trailed off, and he pressed his lips together to stifle a smile that would have been completely inappropriate. 

“Ah,” he said, as gently as he could muster. Glancing around to see that no one was within earshot, he continued, “Brace was meant to leave you a note. Did he not?”

She was too embarrassed to say she couldn’t read, so she mumbled, “I don’t … know. Sir.”

Mr Delaney nodded knowingly. Note or no note, Brace was a drunken fool. James should have addressed this with the girl directly, especially after the night he’d spent, warm in her bed. Tasks had kept him out of the house and at the offices on the docks all day, so he hadn’t had the chance. “Ahh. I see. We’ve moved your things, Matilda.”

It was best if they got into the house where he could speak to her more openly, without fear that all his efforts to hide his household doings were for naught. Plus, there was something about the flush of her cheeks below her shining eyes, the poor dove. It stirred something in him. So, James pressed forward as if Tilly wasn’t there, using his body to wordlessly command her to walk backward—back into the mud porch and hallway that led into the kitchen—and she did just that. She broke eye contact with him, though, and maintained several inches of distance between their bodies. Once inside, Mr Delaney broached that distance with his hand, the key still in it. The back of his gloved fingers came to rest against the front of her shabby coat at the waist. She jumped at his touch, even though several layers.

Tilly was a mess. Beyond confused and more than a little flustered, her tears still threatened to spill over. “Moved? But … to where? Sir?” Her giant, dark eyes darted to his face in time to see him nod briefly, one eyebrow higher than the other, as if he was waiting for her to challenge the comment. Or refuse it.

“Mm,” he dropped his voice to a conspiratorial murmur. “Can’t have you in a room with no locking door, just off the garden. Not when there are dangerous men coming to test our fine house. You’ve been moved to a room that locks from the inside.”

As soon as he said it, James realized that there were two locked doors in his house—how was she to know which locked from the inside? Surely she couldn’t know that he didn’t intend to move her into his mother’s room to share space with Salish’s ghost.

“The attic,” he added quickly, licking the corner of his mouth unconsciously as he searched her face for signs that the information pleased her. Or at least if it made her not cry. He thought of something else: “Besides, your rabbit stew is beyond reproach.” 

That was the best compliment he could muster without mentioning the softness of her breasts or the singular sense of warmth and comfort she added to his home.

Tilly relaxed, even if just slightly, at his compliment. She was so relieved to still be employed—and valued, at that, for her ability to make a good soup—that he could have said anything and she would have found solace in it. She was not cast out. His attention was on her and it wasn’t negative. She took a deep breath and willed her heartbeat to steady.

Before she could even fully fathom that she would be in a room that Mr Delaney himself often slept in, that it would be her quarters as well, Mr Delaney further muscled her toward the kitchen. She backed up accordingly, as if she was his partner in a very strange and menacing dance—or perhaps his prisoner, returning to her cell—until the chopping block was behind her, stopping her movement. He was still upon her, even then, closing the distance between them quickly, all the while looking down at her face. 

Despite his hat and coat still being on, he seemed a different man than the one she’d opened the door to. In control again and unsurprised, with a methodical confidence that compelled her to obey his unspoken commands. Tilly nervously kept her eyes away from his face, focusing on one of the buttons of his greatcoat. It needed mending.

Pinning Tilly between his body and the block, Mr Delaney lowered his head until his mouth was near the housemaid’s neck. When he inhaled deeply, she could feel his wiry whiskers tickling her skin. She took in the rich and coppery smell of him. He could smell her, too. Her skin smelled like sweet milk, but beneath all that, a deeper, darker smell. Almost like incense. Musky. Maybe it was her desire? He’d smelled it the night before, when he was close to her, and now it was back and filling his nose. 

Reaching behind her, Tilly steadied herself on the block with her hands. How much closer could he get to her without stifling the air right out of her? She felt completely enveloped by him, like even the light around them had dimmed.

Without taking an eye off her, James kicked back with one foot, neatly connecting with the door they’d just passed through and managing to slam it shut so hard that the noise was like a thunderclap in the kitchen. A nice trick—one that only a boy who’d spent formative years in that kitchen could perform. With the door closed, it was just the two of them and he inched toward her even more. 

James sniffed the shoulders of her coat, then the skin just under her ear, and then her jaw and finally her mouth, as if he was tasting her breath like a wild animal. 

Tilly felt a sense of calm wash over her. This was something new, but it was unmistakable. She pressed her eyes tightly closed and waited for what might come next, whatever that might be. Even odds, he might kiss her or bite her, tearing into the soft flesh of her lips and cheek just like the rumors all said he would. But she did not think so.

And James did not do so. He simply breathed Tilly in and out with great pleasure. He slowly moved one hand to her shoulder, steadying them both. Into her ear, he whispered in a rasp, “If you wish me to stop, nod your head, and I’ll move your things back into the pantry myself.”

Mr Delaney paused after this. Tilly was drowning in his proximity. This was it, her chance to stop it, if she wanted. To just be his housemaid, to do her duty and let him do his. But she already loved him and he already knew it, so it was too late. Instead of nodding, she released the breath she didn’t know she’d been holding.

It was a game of sorts, she saw with some certainty, despite her ignorance of romance or kindness. You could learn so much by watching people who can’t or don’t want to look at you, and she’d studied everyone she’d ever seen. Slightly emboldened to hold up her end of whatever he’d initiated by bullying her against the chopping block, she played her first move. Quietly, she asked, “May I take your hat, Mr Delaney sir?”

In response, he almost smiled. Almost. He caught himself just in time, bless. There—that sweet voice—was something he knew how to interpret, knew how to counter. The game was afoot! 

And also, his next move was a foot. He slid his right boot directly between her feet.

“Mm,” he grunted, refreshed by Tilly’s subtle coquettishness. He _knew_ she’d liked it, last night. He _knew_ that soft yelp was permission. Tilting his head into her throat to catch more of her delicious smell, he concluded, “No. I don’t think you may, Tilly.” 

James shifted his weight until his knee was cocked between her legs, right between the parted bit of her coat at her knees. Moving closer, all the way closer, as close as he could get under the circumstances, he pressed his knee up and forward until the top of his thick thigh was pressed directly at the apex of her legs. Did he imagine the heat he found there? Could it be discerned through wool and twill?

Tilly nearly dissolved into a puddle right then and there, having never been touched. Not like this, certainly, and also largely having not been touched at all. Her eyes remained closed but she saw stars and meteors flashing behind her lids, nonetheless. The ache inside her, which had never really dissipated from the night before and had likely been there much longer than that, grew stronger, knocking all sense out of her. 

When her knees buckled a bit, Tilly collapsed much of her body weight onto that strong, raised, pressing knee. Without thinking, she groaned and buried her forehead into the strong, smoky shoulder of Mr Delaney’s coat. He, in turn, took Tilly by her upper arms, hitching her up until she was steadied atop his thigh, only lightly brushing the kitchen floor with the toes of her boots. 

James quite enjoyed the slight weight of her body on his knee. The immediate relenting of her posture was all the permission he needed. Who knows what desires are hidden in women, even housemaids? Perhaps she was not so different than she was in his dream with her. 

Wickedly, he flexed his foot, raising and lowering her with his leg in a slow but steady rhythm. She was delicious, even riding his knee. Unspoiled, like a fresh blanket of snow, a pool of clear water, the moon on a clear night. There was no worldliness about the girl. No angles worked, no bewitching seduction, like Zilpha. No quips, like Lorna. No commerce, like Helga. Here, there were no taboos to bump up against. He was in his right to treat her thus. There was no one to stop them and, given her acquiescence, no reason for them to stop. This was his house, he thought, with no small amount of righteous conviction. He could do as he pleased, and did he not deserve sweetness and light? Were they not two animals, rubbing against each other for warmth?

Tilly shuddered against him as he pressed a few more times into the center of her. Everything was new to her, he could see that in her mind. He could show her kindness. He could teach her and learn her at the same time. The power of that—the power of being the first to show Matilda how to truly live in the world, not just survive. How to use her body, and her mind, and her innate knowledge. James could give her the protection and warmth that he’d never been shown. 

“Mmm,” James murmured in deep approval. Her quiet calmness had taken new form, as a shared secret between them.

He looked down at her face—the dark lashes rimming her closed lids, the florid blush of her cheeks, the jagged scar on her lip, the puckered skin at her neck—and almost kissed her mouth. He moved to do it, lost for a moment, but stopped himself before he made contact. 

In due time, he thought. Not here, not now. If he started to kiss her pink lips, he’d certainly start to unbutton her coat, and if he unbuttoned her coat, he’d replace the knee between her legs with his hand. Then his mouth. Then his cock. And if that happened, he was likely to lose the focus he sorely needed at that moment in time. No—too soon to have Tilly here in the kitchen, rushing through her first time. Especially when Brace was liable to come back downstairs with his pistol in hand to investigate the slamming of the door. 

There was nothing more, however, that James would like than to lose himself in the folds of her skirts, to lick every part of the young maid’s body, to explore where her scars began and ended, to learn her in a way that she’d not yet been learned. To discover her, just like his father had discovered Nootka Sound.

_Next Week: Chapter 5: To Be of Some Hard, Simple, Undeniable Use_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: Because of the screwy chronology of the series, when I wrote this, I was for some reason under the impression that maybe Zilpha was older than James. So, please just do some creative hand-waving about that. I've since accepted that she was younger than JKD, but I don't feel like amending this chapter.


	6. To Be of Some Hard, Simple, Undeniable Use

CHAPTER 5: To Be of Some Hard, Simple, Undeniable Use

“James! I’m—I’m appalled. You … you just can’t! It’s not right!” Lorna’s boot tip caught on the hem of her dress as she started to climb the second flight of stairs in pursuit of James. She struggled with it briefly, cursing under her breath. Where was he going? “Damn you, wait. Don’t make me chase after you!”

James Delaney did not remotely slow his ascent up to his rooms in the attic, though he did not run. He still had his hat and his coat on, even, having only recently come in from outside. His boots clomped loudly a solid flight of stairs ahead of Lorna Bow’s nagging. He regretted having permitted her a key to the house in the first place. He should have known Lorna would take advantage when she thought he wasn’t home. She was a little too interested in the housekeeping staff, the last time they’d spoken. Of course she’d come back to get a look.

And what timing. What damned timing. It wasn’t Brace who discovered he and the maid in such close proximity in the kitchen—it was his damned stepmother, famous actress of stage and street, Lorna Bow. Unrelenting critic of James’s every move and internationally renowned pain in the arse.

“She’s … she looks like an underfed urchin. I mean—she’s a child, James! You mustn’t!” Lorna’s sharp words echoed down the stairwell and probably all through the house as she followed him in hot pursuit. If her shrillness made it all the way down to the kitchen, he’d—

James stopped short at her remark—the one about Matilda being a child—and twisted around to glare at Mrs Delaney. His eyes dark, he raised a menacing finger to point at the stairs beneath his feet, hissing, “Lower your voice and mind your words. She is not a child.”

Lorna opened her clever mouth but wisely shut it again, a small stab of shame pricking her in the ribs at his warning. She hoped that the maid hadn’t heard what she’d said—good lord. No cause to bring the girl more embarrassment. She’d looked absolutely mortified when Lorna entered the kitchen just moments before, as if she’d been caught _in flagrante delicto_. Which, insanely, she had. With James! Delaney! The maid!

Annoyingly, Lorna hadn’t seen much. She didn’t entirely know what she’d expected when she went snooping into the kitchen after hearing low voices. An old fat cook, slaving over a pot of beans, maybe. Someone lecturing Brace about tallow. At the very least, a wise old granny with crinkly eyes and a flour-dusted apron. Why ever did she have it in her mind that the help James had hired was a weathered crone instead of … well. That.

Once her eyes had adjusted from the relative brightness of the hall to the dimness of the kitchen, she saw James, facing her. His eyes half-lidded, his beard nuzzling (nuzzling!!!) against the neck of a woman—a girl, really—whose back was to Lorna. The girl had a thick dark braid between narrow shoulders and was wearing a threadbare old wool coat. She looked to be gently heaving against James, who was holding the girl by the upper arms. Both of them were entirely engrossed in whatever it was that they were doing and didn’t notice her intrusion.

As an actress, it was hardly the first time that Lorna had walked in on various combinations of people making time with each other. It happens. But, not only was it the first time she’d walked into House Delaney unannounced and uninvited, the scene she encountered was one she’d never dreamt of. At first, she thought the pair was making love right there on the chopping block—a notion so incongruous that her mind barely registered it.

She blurted out “Oh!” before she could stop herself, spoiling her ability to simply retreat back into the hall and pretend she hadn’t seen anything. She was just so startled, that the noise escaped her. James’s head snapped up, eyes open now and looking murderously in her direction. Lorna quickly bleated, “Sorry! Please excuse me!”

She backed into the hallway and steadied herself against the wall, thinking, _Oh please let that not have just happened. Please let the floorboards swallow me up if it did._

Breath caught in her throat, Lorna thought that maybe she should peek around the doorframe. Just to confirm that her eyes weren’t playing tricks on her. She needed to verify that she did indeed just see James Keziah Delaney—son of Horace, her late husband, and leader of the damned of London—engaging in a decidedly human activity in the kitchen. With a … girl.

When Lorna did manage to see around the frame, she found that James and the girl had not only quickly extracted themselves from each other but the girl had spun around. She was standing mouth agape, looking at James, who was rushing to the doorway that Lorna was surreptitiously trying to disappear back into. He looked very … angry. Plus, he was approaching fast. But if there is one thing that Lorna was good at, she’s good at deflecting an enraged bull. Neatly stepping to the side and into the kitchen, she avoided James completely and amicably stuck her hand out in the girl’s direction.

“Ah. Uh, you must be the new housekeeper. I’m—“ Lorna stopped and smiled warmly, immediately taken aback by the glaring knife scars on the girl’s face, made all the more apparent by the girl’s crimson flush. Oh, blimey. Don’t gawk! She would never be so rude to intentionally stare at someone’s facial disfigurement, so she willed herself to look directly into the girl’s eyes. Big as saucers and quite sweet, like a fawn’s. “I’m Lorna Bow—uh, Delaney. Sorry. I’m Lorna. Pleased to meet you.”

James was already storming right past her and into the hall, his rage propelling him to get as far away from the kitchen as possible. Over his shoulder, he barked, “Matilda, you are under no obligation to reply to that woman.”

 _Well_ , "that woman" thought, _I shouldn’t have worried about being rude._ Lorna rolled her eyes rather blatantly and turned her outstretched hand—which had yet to be engaged in a handshake—toward the ceiling in exasperation.

“Oh, wonderful,” she grumbled, shaking her head. She’d need to do some damage control now. Smiling once again at the girl, she asked politely, “Could I trouble you to put on some water for tea? Back momentarily.”

The maid—called Matilda, Lorna gathered—just blinked mutely at her, mouth still open. Oh, come on! Lorna didn’t have time for any of this—not to explain herself to the help, not even to make a proper introduction—so she spun on her heel and gave chase for James, who was galumphing up the stairs like a teenager who’d been told to go to his room.

* * *

Tilly had a cot in the corner, behind a screen for privacy, just adjacent to the attic’s entrance. She was glad to be up off the floor of the tight-walled pantry, so she didn’t mind sharing her immediate bed space with a small fortress of old steamer trunks, a cluttered tabletop, crates of detritus, old bottles, and what she suspected to be giant sacks of garbage. At the opposite end of the room, by the window, was Mr Delaney’s personal space: a proper bed on a proper frame, seemingly endless desks for writing and charting (and strange experiments including colored powders), and a hearth in which she kept a small fire in for warmth.

There was rarely anyone in the house when Matilda went to bed, despite it typically being late evening. Mr Delaney’s business often kept him—and Mr Brace, as well—so Tilly had more than enough time at night to complete her daily housework, toil away at whatever project she’d kept for the evening, and even to begin cleaning the attic room. She locked the door behind her every time she went into the attic, as per Mr Delaney’s instructions. It was for her safety, he said, shortly after Mrs Bow had left. She was permitted anywhere she needed to work in the house now, with the exception of Mr Delaney’s mother’s room (which she was wildly curious about). But, if she wasn’t working in the kitchen, she mostly kept to the dusty attic, where she felt the safest.

Up there, she cleaned the floors and the walls of their years-old coating of dirt and oil and grime, and she dusted the many trinkets and artifacts that were displayed on various rough-hewn bookcases. Artifacts from the whole world, she was sure. Looking at the objects were her best, most stimulating, and—up to that point—only sources of entertainment and education. At least since her mother died. She spent some time wondering what her mother would think of her life now. What she’d think of Mr Delaney. She might have known his father, too, maybe they’d crossed paths when he’d visited Aunt Clara.

It had been some time since her mother had visited her in a dream, Tilly realized. Months since it had happened regularly, and not at all since she’d moved into town and into House Delaney. Her dreams were vivid, always full of information, even if Tilly wasn’t able to understand it all. After her death, it seemed that Hypatia came to teach her daughter some of what she hadn’t gotten to in life: old remedies for common maladies, traditions of the moon cycle, when to harvest, when to sow, how to keep the brownies happy, toward which horizon her head should point when she slept. This was information that only her mother would tell her, and Tilly carried it around in her head like a shining jewel. Even if she’d unconsciously made half of the knowledge up, it was of value to her because it was voiced by the memory of her mother.

Tilly cleaned herself, too, up in the attic, laboriously carrying pitchers of water up from the kitchen to the top floor of the building. Just in case, she told herself, feeling very salacious. Just in case Mr Delaney came for her again. Days had passed since he’d put her atop his knee in the kitchen, since Mrs Delaney had walked in on them. The woman and James had immediately thereafter quarreled, while Tilly sat stunned in a chair at the kitchen table. Every inch of her skin was flushed and tingling, even the parts of her skin that had almost no feeling in them from the fire.

Mr Delaney was the first person who had really touched her as a woman, or even looked at her like a man looks at a woman. She was sure of that. And then, shortly thereafter, he was the first person who’d defended her in any meaningful way, to the woman who’d just interrupted them. Tilly overheard him saying that she wasn’t a child, that she was a woman, that what went on between him and her was none of Mrs Delaney’s concern.

She is a woman, he’d said. Me and her, he’d said. She’d never been called a woman or even included in anything. It was … glorious. Sitting in the kitchen that day, she was so happy that a whole battalion of soldiers could have walked in on them and it wouldn’t have dampened the sprites that she felt flitting around in her chest.

Since then, though, other than a few meaningful looks, there was nothing between them. Tilly had been woken by the sound of Mr Delaney’s light rapping on the attic door a few nights. Some nights, he just let himself in with his own key.

When he was in, she’d tend to him, if he needed tending. Usually, those were the nights when he’d knocked. Sometimes, he appeared so weary that he’d be in a near stupor, and he more than once headed to his bed without greeting her with a grunt in her general direction. She longed for him to say her name again, for him to get close to her. Tilly felt safe in the attic, to be sure, but it paled in comparison to the security of being surrounded by Mr Delaney’s solidity and smell.

Sadly, he seemed to barely notice her unless something on him needed mending or tending. One night, he didn’t come to the attic at all. He spent that night in his mother’s room—she could hear him murmuring through the walls.

The first two nights, she barely slept, expecting him to come to her in the night. But then, by the fourth, fifth, and then the eighth night, she relaxed and slept. It was almost enough to just be in his room. Almost. She recalled very fondly the dream she’d had of them together, and each night before she slept, she tried to will another one.

But dreams can’t be forced, can they? Not of her mother, and certainly not of Mr Delaney.

* * *

James absolutely did notice Tilly, however. Acutely so. The soft way she greeted him at night, like a quiet nurse. Had there ever been a woman less noisy than her? Tilly might dress his wounds or bring him his supper, if he asked, but she stayed quiet all the while. What’s more, she kept the attic warm for him and never disturbed his many projects that were strewn about. She seemed to be waiting for something. He suspected it was him.

James purposefully didn’t look at the girl much, as he was entirely too preoccupied with his many-tiered plans, with his business, with the league of the damned. He spent all day, every day, listening to people whinging about what needed doing, what they couldn’t do themselves, what the company thought, what the crown said. So, even when he got home, James didn’t have the time to attend to Tilly half as much as she attended to him, or half as much as he’d like to.

He did find himself distracted by spying the soft movement of her unencumbered breasts under her nightdress and shawl—but only fleetingly. Also, perhaps once or twice, when he was still up and reading by the hearth, he noticed her small pale feet when she’d tossed aside her quilt in her sleep. She’d turned herself completely around in her bed for some reason, and her head was pointing due north, like she was some kind of compass needle.

James was sorely tempted to meet her in her dreams again, but the truth was, when he slept, he was sleeping soundly for the first time in ages. It was like being reborn a new man. No terrors surfaced to meet him any longer, at least when he slept in the room that he shared with Miss Matilda. He’d tested it by spending the night in his mother’s room, only to wake up shouting. It was almost as if the attic was somehow warded to protect him from hauntings—the strangest thing, really.

About a week into sharing his attic with Tilly, the time finally came that James wasn’t tired or occupied, or drunk, or suffering. In fact, he felt whole and calm after a day of relatively positive results at the docks. Additionally, there were no new holes in him and his mind seemed much less muddled after all the sleep. He bade goodnight to Brace, who retreated into his own quarters, and climbed the many stairs. On the way up, he considered that maybe there was no reason to keep her waiting. Despite Lorna’s disapproval and a few cocked eyebrows from Brace, Tilly was where she was because he'd willed it. Because he wanted her there.

Tilly, quiet and warm, was in the attic, waiting for him. He found her there, legs folded underneath her while she darned the heel of her woolen stockings by the glow of one candle. He greeted her and invited her to join him by the fireplace, because of superior light to work by, and because that’s where he’d be. The look on her face was … not displeasing.

Quickly gathering herself up, Tilly came to his part of the attic, which was nearest the fire. He gave her the lone chair, because he was not a monster, and instead groaned his way down to the floor to come to rest on a low, flat cushion. She looked unsure of this arrangement, but at his urging, reluctantly took to the old armchair.

“Did you know …” he began, in a low but pleasant tone, while simultaneously unbuttoning his waistcoat, “that your mother knew my mother?”

Tilly’s eyes darted from his fingers’ casual manipulation up to his face. That had gotten her attention.

She blurted out, without thinking, “MY mother? Mine? But—how? How could you know that? Isn’t your …?”

James nodded, staying silent while casually taking off his waistcoat and untucking his undershirt. He was not at all comfortable all trussed up in city clothes. After his shirt, he worked at taking off his boots. Surely the girl wouldn’t mind. After all, she was already in her nightclothes and had seen him in his. He couldn’t recall being so at ease with a woman. Something about the girl grounded him, and he profoundly enjoyed it.

“Yes, your mother. … Hypatia, wasn’t it?” He paused, mid-boot removal, to study Tilly’s face, which was looking at him with amazement.

James sensed that he’d just given her an actual gift without meaning to. Her face expressed it cleanly: gratitude and wonder. Never mind that he’d kept this information from her for these days, nor how he discovered it. Never mind that he’d only learned it after he’d visited her aunt to settle his father’s debts.

But yes, Hypatia Woodruff, the healer. Her mother. The witch. She’d cared for his mother at Bedlam, James explained to a rapt Tilly. The girl's darning was soon abandoned. He spoke exclusively about his mother, about Salish, over the next hour, with a few solemn and perceptive questions from Tilly. Once he started talking, it was if the floodgates had opened and all his stories about his mother came streaming out. He'd never spoken plainly or matter-of-factly about his mother, but he was now—as if it wasn’t unusual for a son to learn about his dead mother through half-true rumors and brutal accusations. As if it weren’t unusual for a son to be visited by his dead mother in dreams.

When James concluded telling Tilly what he knew of her mother and what he knew of his own mother—how Salish’s spirit haunted and guided him still, how he knew her face better from the dreams he’d manifested as an adult than from any memory he had of her in life—he looked up to find Tilly’s fire-lit face wet with tears. Oh dear.

Concerned he’d upset the girl once again, James straightened up off the elbow he’d been leaning on and began to reach for her. “Tilly …” he started, trying to think of the best way to console her. Best to apologize. “Please—”

He didn’t have far to reach, though, as Tilly had already left the chair to join him on the floor. She threw her arms around his neck and virtually collapsed onto him, crying and laughing at the same time. She didn’t seem happy but she clearly wasn’t sad, either. This was something greater than the two emotions and it shook through her slight body. James took her into his arms, holding her tightly. He didn’t know how to be of use to most women when they wept, but this was different. All he had to do was wait. After some time, she pulled back and shook her head at him, smiling for the first time since he'd seen her.

“Thank you,” Matilda whispered, with bright eyes and wet lips. She looked up him, gratefully and sweetly, and he finally understood. It was as if she could see right into him, and him into her. Right to the hearts of who had made them what they were. The two of them were of a kind.

It was like clouds had cleared in front of a full moon, her face shining up at him. James sighed a low, deep sigh as he moved his hand to Tilly’s face and held it there, the expanse of his palm covering most of her cheek and jaw. His thumb once again traced over the scars on her face. Humbling, the girl was. A small bright light in a dark world full of monsters. How he’d managed to summon what he needed—into a life he’d never deserved—he didn’t know. Perhaps it wasn't his doing.

He looked at Tilly rather fondly and whispered, “You are like me. Except you are not ruined.”

Then, like dark magic descending, James leaned closer and pressed his lips to hers, an overture that Tilly eagerly accepted.


	7. Over Palms Laid

CHAPTER 6: Over Palms Laid

Looking back on his own first time, James mostly recalled the quickness of it. And the secrecy. It was entirely forbidden to do what they were doing—by law, by common sense, by heavenly decree—and taboo: hot, rushed breaths; grabbing hands; gritting teeth. His first experience with sex was all about how much he could get away with doing with her, to her, before he was made to stop, before he was made to pretend like nothing had happened, to act as if it was all his grand idea and she was just an innocent bystander. 

It was less a form of loving congress between two people and more a physical expression of their naive frustration and powerlessness. Between them, it was an argument of sorts. Zilpha was neither instructive nor reciprocal in her actions, something that James believed to simply be her way at the time, but would later come to see as her notion of retaining plausible deniability. He was being used, full stop. He was a tool for the satiation of her desire. He was nothing if not willing, of course, happily jumping when she said jump, happily silenced when she wanted him silent. But it was never about his pleasure, his education, despite him garnering plenty of both. Exploring Zilpha’s body back then, back when everything was a first, was not unlike exploring his own: furtive, urgent, with the delicious tang of sin. The major difference, of course, was that he would never deny himself, given time or opportunity, and Zilpha denied him at every turn. 

In the flesh, Zilpha taught James nothing except how to move quickly and do as he was told. In dreams, however, things were quite different.

The dreams that they shared when they were young were happy accidents, nothing more. In their adolescent minds, everyone who fell into the Land of Nod landed nose-first in the lap of whomever they desired. They’d never even discussed the dreams at any length, both satisfied to simply enjoy them for the guilt-free, stringless fantasies that they were. Waking up in their respective beds, with a smile on their faces, as it were, they were able to leave their sins behind in their slightly damp bed linens. 

Later, when he was in Africa, when he was away (let’s say “away,” because we don’t dare to say what James really was), James learned the ways to harness his nascent powers of dreamwalking. He was _taught_ the way, to be more accurate, by someone smart enough to know that he was not the one to invent it. Much smarter than James, who was immediately humbled and brought rather low by the inept management of his own dreams. He didn’t know he could control this power, conjure it, direct it. He played bystander to his own magick all his life, until he was instructed. 

However, once he learned it, he was unstoppable. No one was safe from his ethereal raids. And, of course, the first person James visited was his sister Zilpha, across the hemisphere. The initial experience was so intense that he didn’t visit her again for some time, and even when he began again, he did so sparingly. He was in training himself, and the part of him that loved his sister didn’t want his own animal obsession to become a sickness for her, ensconced in her austere life back in England. He trusted that the cosmos would direct his timing when the need to revisit her in her dreams came again. Which it would again, he was sure.

But that’s another canon, to be indexed in someone else’s library.

James, then, was determined that his housemaid Matilda’s first experience be more substantial and memorable than his first. She would not wake up the next morning—or any morning in the future—as he had: wishing for details, tangible evidence, some promise of more. Details were something he could provide Tilly, there, in the flesh, in his chambers in the attic. He could give her the details that were sorely lacking in her dream that he’d invaded only a week before. 

James hungrily gathered details, himself: the soft pressure of Tilly’s closed mouth against his, the loose hairs from her braid at her shoulder brushing against his chest, the herbaceous sweetgrass smell of her skin, the slight weight of her arms around his neck. 

To be gentle with the girl, to let her choose the pressure, to let her relax into it: It didn’t come naturally. It wasn’t in his nature to make love. Another thing that Zilpha, and then life, had taught James was that most women wanted him to be a brute. They wanted him to fuck them into the mattress, into the floor, into the wall, into oblivion. Ruin them. In most circumstances, this role suited him just fine. Everything in his world was brutal, coarse and cruel, so why shouldn’t lovemaking be the same? It was “only the once,” it was only for the night, it was only what that amount of coin could buy, it was only because they couldn’t help themselves. These were the rules of engagement under normal conditions, with the partners who’d interacted with James Delaney in that way. That’s how you fuck when you want to die, he came to see. But how do you fuck when you’ve already died? How do you fuck when you want to live?

Thus, with the girl—the tiny, scar-marked thing curled against him—there was no need for brutality. She’d had enough already. And now, she was fully there, in front of James, warm and clean in his arms, and she would be there in the morning, too. If she wished it, that is—and she would, he knew.

After a fashion, Tilly gingerly opened her mouth to his and, happy to hand the reins entirely over to her, he closed his eyes and followed her lead. When she cautiously licked his lower lip, he met her tongue with his and grazed it over her bottom lip in return. She grew even bolder and moved her tongue into his mouth entirely, swiping it against his and pressing harder into the kiss. He moaned softly into her mouth, engaging a modicum of restraint and opening his eyes to see her. _Careful now_ , he thought. _Steady_.

Where _did_ she learn the finer points of kissing, anyway? The thought entered his mind and almost on cue, Tilly pulled her mouth away. She was already very close, but he fought the urge to pull her back even closer toward him. He wasn’t done with that kiss.

“I don’t—” Tilly began to say what he already knew.

James rubbed his thumbs over the bony ribs on her side. He interrupted her with: “Yes, I know.” 

Tilly quickly shook her head before helplessly pressing her lips to his again for a quick kiss. James spread his fingers wide when they kissed, to feel her body expand and contract with every breath. Then she added, “I’ve never—”

He nodded when she pulled away again, and repeated in his lowest register, “Yes, Tilly. I know.”

She looked embarrassed—of course he knew she was inexperienced in these ways—and, to his deep satisfaction, there was that lurid flush of color into her cheeks again. Tilly admitted, as if it were a shameful thing, “I … dreamed of it. With—with you.” She closed her mouth and pressed her lips together tightly, her gaze moving over his face, begging his approval.

_Oh, dear girl, that is hardly a confession._

“Ahhh,” James sighed deeply. He sat up a bit and bodily rearranged them both until he was cross-legged before her and she was all but cradled in his lap. He looked at her, cringing at him like she’d done something wrong, and immediately came clean so as to let her off the hook. “Yes. I knew that, too.”

Tilly looked confused, but slightly relieved. “You knew? How could—”

Sheepishness was also not in his nature, so he couldn’t even begin to feign it. He reached up and dislodged a delicate strand of hair that was caught in the outer corner of her lip, lingering there long enough for his thumb to feel the residual moisture left by their tongues. He wanted to lick the scar that split her lip into two plump, petal-like sections. He wanted to suck her lip into his mouth and bite it hard enough to draw blood. He wanted to do even more than that, but willed himself to conjure up some kind of patience. 

_Out with it, then._

“I was there,” he admitted to her. Again, confusion washed across her face, so he added, “In your dream, Tilly. I was there, with you.” 

Lest she think he was teasing her, he continued, leaning in to inhale deeply against her neck while he murmured, “I have learned to travel in dreams. And I visited you in your sleep that night.”

There were many reasons to begrudge him that visit, and he discovered every one of those reasons when he learned to master the skill. What a person might say, should they believe themselves to be violated. The perversion of their free will. His intrusion into their most private realms. Tilly would be in her rights to slap him silly and run away. Hells, she would be in her rights to put a blade in him, should she feel unsafe. If James had been at all capable of defending himself against the various nefarious spirits and creatures that had penetrated his nightmares over the years, he would have done at least that. But his hauntings were different. The trust she had in him was clear in her expression. He had not earned it, but he would accept it, because his gifts were not always intended to be weapons.

“So …” Tilly started, her eyebrows furrowing a bit as she recalled the dream. Her cheeks flushed again, when she thought of that encounter. Oh yes, she remembered it, he could see it in her face. She didn’t have the details, but she had the gist of it. Inches away from her thigh, his cock also flushed, stirring as he thought of her pressing herself onto his fingers in the dream. “Was that you, then, who …?” She trailed off, unable to say it.

“No,” James said, solemnly amused, as he pet her hair. “That was you, Tilly.”

Her eyes screwed shut and she wilted a bit, embarrassed. One big breath in and out, and she groaned a soft, anguished, “Oh.”

“You aren’t surprised,” James noted. Curious, that. She was more concerned with which particular acts she’d exacted on his astral body than the notion that he’d conjured himself into her dream in the first place. It was perplexing. “Why? Do you know this sort of travel?”

Tilly shook her head and snuggled herself against him. He held her like that, still and secure, for a moment before she continued, quietly asking, “My mother used to draw down the moon for her rituals. Is it like that?”

James knew very little about how local witches—or anyone else, really—connected to the spirit world, how they communicated with the divine, or how they accessed the subconscious. He knew what he knew, simply put, but he was wise enough to know that there were entire worlds that he had not yet accessed.

“I don’t know,” he admitted to Tilly, nuzzling her neck. He added, in a murmur, “But you can teach me of it. And I will show you what I know, if you wish.”

He let his hand slowly meander from her waist to her hip, her flank, her thigh. “I will show you anything you wish to learn,” he sighed. “You only have to wish it.”

Tilly nodded her head against his shoulder. “Will you show me how to touch you?” she asked, hesitantly.

“Mmm. Yes, dove, in time,” James replied. “But first …” He slid his hand under the hem of her nightshirt and felt the fine, downy hair on the skin above her knee. “Do you know your own body? Perhaps we should start there.”

* * *

Tilly knew that when Mr Delaney requested she call him James when they were close like this—never “Mr Delaney”—that he wasn’t teasing her. He wasn’t indulging her crush, he wasn’t toying with her, he wasn’t going to ravage her like some kind of monster … he was treating her like a man treats a woman. It was as if the stars all fell into alignment at the same time. Like every sad, boring, lonely moment in her life was leading up to the right person taking notice of her.

In the first ten minutes after he’d kissed her, she pinched the inside of her arm a half dozen times, trying to wake herself up. She did it again once he told her he’d visited her in a dream, in case that was the case. But she wasn’t dreaming. She was in her body and he was in his, and they were together. She and James.

It was like her world had split open, cracked apart like a goose egg, and a whole new world lay within it. In this new world, she was naked and beautiful, worshipped like a goddess. Tilly trembled in anticipation while James gently took off her night clothes, and then nearly swooned as he ran his fingers over the roughest and most scarred bits of her skin. He wanted to touch and taste everything about her that she had believed to be ugly. Under his close scrutiny and attention, she became something new, something lovely. Even her scars, which he paid particular attention to. Anytime she became self-conscious and move to shyly cover herself, James stayed her hand and clucked a warning at her. This was no place for that, he told her.

James wanted to see and touch and taste all of her, he said. It made her delirious to think of it, and almost every part of her body blushed, impossibly. He went over body her as if he was inspecting her for flaws, only to find none. He did that even to her most obvious flaws! Although he didn’t say much, he found ways to express his approval. Her earlobes got a slow, low moan. The small of her back, his fingers running from there to the small crest of her buttocks, received an almost comedically surprised “Ah!,” making her giggle nervously. Her left foot’s arched instep: “Hmm.” Both nipples, which received more than their fair share of attention, each got twin affirmations of “Yes.” After being very slow and patiently attending to her, James was getting eager for something. But what, Tilly wondered.

Tilly could see, plainly—obviously, even—his desire for her, thick under the fabric of his trousers. But she wasn’t sure how to get from where she was to where she wanted to be. Despite the attention, she wasn’t sure how to ask for what she wanted. 

“I want to see you,” she blurted out, a rush of exhalation following. She lifted her head to see James running his puffy, kiss-bruised lips across the arch of her feet. His beard tickled her and she shivered. Breathlessly, she asked, “Will you show me your body?”

James paused to look at her face. He considered it for a moment and nodded, “Yes. But I have not finished with you just yet.”

It seemed only fair that the both of them be in the altogether, and he stood to his full height. The fire’s warmth was plenty to keep her warm and it did a fine job of illuminating James, as well. Without breaking eye contact, he obeyed and began to take off the rest of his clothes. When he was just as the lord made him (give or take some modifications), he stood before her. Still sitting on the rug near the hearth, looking up at him, Tilly took in his form like he was a statue in a garden. He was akin to a god, standing there, all muscle and bone and sinewy power, with tanned skin and just a light smattering of hair to perhaps remind her that he was yet a mortal. 

Every part of him was something she wanted to study and commit to memory: the inky legend of the tattoos on his torso, the black bands around his strong thighs, the way his smallest finger wouldn’t straighten even when his hand was relaxed, the fine contours and planes of his face, the slight bowing of his legs, as if he were born on a horse, and his scars, of which there were many. Some scars were in places that made it clear they were gained in a fight or through injury, but some were patterned, as if they were intentionally drawn. She was enthralled by his marks. His strong back and the roundness of his behind—quite possibly the only truly rounded part of him. And his sex, finally free of his constrictive clothing, was proud and unrepentant, framed by a thicker patch of hair. It was pointing straight at her as if it were a dowsing rod and she were fresh water. Tilly, although inexperienced, was aware that he was in an excited state, and immediately lost her breath. It was because of her, that he was so. She thrilled to the thought. Tilly would certainly not suffer for details, should she ever find need to recount the first time she saw a man in the nude.

She shivered, so James easily picked her up and carried her to his bed gently, as if she was but a feather. In the privacy of his room, there was very little of the Mr Delaney who’d bullied her against the chopping block in the kitchen. She very much liked and desired that man, too, make no mistake, but in her vulnerable state, wearing nothing but firelight, she knew that it was a kindness to be treated as such.

He laid her out on the bed and moved over her until his head was resting on her thigh. He looked up at her, which caused a minor panic to reveal itself. He was so close to her most intimate parts.  

To be in his bed meant that coupling was soon to come, she imagined. Even with his skin touching so much of hers, and his fingers tracing the delicate pathways of her veins and arteries, even lying on sheets that she’d painstakingly mended and washed, she was overcome by how much she did not know about what should happen next.

“James,” she said, his first name unfamiliar in her mouth as it was in her mind. He didn’t answer, as he was guiding her legs apart. She called his name again and he stopped kissing the soft skin of her hip long enough to look at her questioningly. “Will it hurt?” she asked.

Something flickered through his expression and she regretted asking it immediately. She held her breath, but he replied, thoughtfully, “For a moment … yes.”

Tilly watched him as he returned his mouth to her skin, making his way over the sharp edge of her hipbone and onto the flat plane of her lower stomach. 

“I will not lie to you, Tilly,” he promised, “and I will not intentionally cause you harm. It will hurt, yes. But … I will prepare you.”

With that luscious mouth, he would prepare her. With his lips, with his tongue, with the light scratch of his beard. She was not ready, by any means, but Tilly took to it quickly. Every sensation was new and she was learning that many parts of her body did more than she’d ever imagined they did. She closed her eyes and experienced his intimate kiss from a void that focused solely on her own breath and his touch; his mouth on her, teasing and sucking and licking. He was everywhere, though, even when she closed her eyes. Images of him filled the darkness behind her eyelids: James in the water, James striding through her aunt’s garden, James naked before her, James reaching for her. Then, there were stars manifesting in the dark. A meteor shot the heavens and he was at her side, looking up with her. The dark menace of the deep forest and a bonfire to lead the way. His hand, holding hers, guiding her. His hands, finding her. His fingers, on her and inside of her. 

Tilly worried her fingers into his hair, and in turn, he took her hips into his hands to get better purchase. The harder she pulled him to her, the more forceful he came at her, until she was all but fused to his urgent, hungry mouth. He did not let up even after she cried out and dissolved into a writhing, raw heap. A barrage of shakes came to her then but still he held her tightly against his mouth, sucking at the entire upper apex of her sex. He diligently rode out the last waves of her climax and calmed his tongue’s movements until she was relaxing against his mouth. Tilly missed the warm and wet sensation of his mouth, but was also felt a wave of relief. It was almost too much and she struggled to catch her breath.

When she opened her eyes to look down at James in wonder, she found him looking quite smug indeed. That, whatever it was, was no accident, no trick. He and his glistening lips and the damp hair on his chin made her see stars, and now she was truly his. She let out a breathless, slightly exhausted giggle and loosened her grip on James’s hair. In return, he placed a cheeky, firm, and wet kiss on the crease where her leg and belly met, causing her to loudly bark out a surprised laugh. 

Looking up and across the entire length of Tilly’s torso, James wiped some of her wetness out of his beard with his hand and, despite himself, gave her a broad smile. Another first. 


	8. On the Threshold of the Coming Day

CHAPTER 7: On the Threshold of the Coming Day

It wasn’t that long ago that witches had been murdered for a variety of reasons, including casting spells and curses, treating people and animals with folk medicine, turning milk to blood, looking at someone pointedly, talking out of turn. The list of reasons why someone might be hunted as a witch goes on and on, and continues even now. 

Of course, in retrospect, it was clearly all a strategy wrought by the Church—England’s biggest business—to instill a deep fear of the unknown, to control poor countryfolk by taking away their only source of power or autonomy, to force them into the village for worship and services, and to prey on women and dissidents for power, political gain, and to punish them for exercising personal, spiritual, and sexual liberty. 

Somewhere, even now, on old, brittle paper with frayed edges, you could get permission to read spiky script outlining the dire suspicion that the accused had “engaged in congress with the devil.” Congress, meaning (more often than not, and quite literally) that the accused witch and the actual devil—the Dark Lord, the Blackman, Old Scratch—were fucking. 

For pleasure. 

Witches were made to die for that fantasy, and even less.

In fact, by 1814, when James Keziah Delaney and his fine new boots and very tall hat returned to London’s cobbled streets, after his many years on the dark continent, witches had NOT been persecuted since just 1717. For just half the time that they had been lawfully destroyed in the first place. 

It had been nearly 100 years since the last witch had been put on trial, versus close to 200 years of the Church and Country razing witches into piles of bone, ash, and dust. For coming.

Because only a devil would make a woman come. And only a witch would let him.

* * * 

For all her innocence and inexperience, Tilly had become quite the student. She raptly watched James reveal to her which parts of him he liked to be stroked gently and which he liked to be handled roughly. He demonstrated, too, reclining back against the frame of his bed, languid but still so intense, looking at her with relaxed, half-lidded eyes. He gently took her hand in his to manipulate her fingers against his flesh before leaving her to experiment. She explored his body not like he explored hers—not expertly, not with any sort of precedence to guide her fingers—but she also did so without any expectation of a reaction. 

James remained passive and stoic as Tilly ran her fingers and her lips over his many scars. After a while, he quietly began sharing the secret map of his skin: where he got that jagged scar over his ribs; when and why he received the measured set of ornamental scars on his arm; a long list of terrible injuries he sustained while learning to fight; a clicking, creaking knee from an injury that didn’t heal just right; his permanently quirked pinky from, embarrassingly enough, a childhood incident from which he learned to not play with knives. He gave Tilly just enough words to orient her to him, not to gloat or impress her, and she hung on each one.

Oh, but she was impressed anyway. Every part of him was so very impressive. Given, she didn’t have much to compare him to, but she trusted that he was rare. Like this, he wasn’t so menacing. Also, the firm muscles of his abdomen flexing and jumping under her touch told her that she was doing right by him. The wetness between her own thighs told her something else. How did anyone get anything done, once sex was introduced into a life? How was she supposed to wash pots or shuck oysters when all she wanted from this day forward was James Delaney’s mouth on her?

She’d only just forced her legs to stop shaking from the intense attention James had given her and here she wanted him again. She wanted to be firmly grounded in her body once more, anchored by James’s touch, while her mind was set free to wander. The night was passing too fast, she worried. Between their lips and tongues and fingers, they’d covered much ground, but there were so many other things that she wanted to know. So, greedy for more education, she stopped her hands from wandering over the black bands encircling his thighs and moved them directly to the rigid thickness of his sex. She moved as he’d shown her, her hands clasped around him as if they were in prayer. He moaned contentedly and closed his eyes—but not long after, and much to her confusion, tensed and sat up slightly. He pulled her hands, both of them, into his and sighed.

Tilly shrank back, concerned. His face was inscrutable. She gasped, “I’m sorry. Have I hurt you?”

James groaned and shook his head. “No no no, Tilly,” he murmured, bringing her hands to his mouth so he could kiss her fingers. “You have not. At all.”

Sitting up fully, James released her hands, which somewhat lazily ended up on his thighs, and leaned closer to her so that they might kiss. His hands went to cradle the back of her head and he deepened the kiss. 

“Come to me,” he urged, pulling her gently toward him, speaking his words directly in her mouth. “Sit astride me.” 

Tilly did as she was told, but gingerly, coming to rest atop those same black bands on his upper legs that she’d only recently been studying. Her heart leapt into her throat as she realized that the time had come.

“James?” she asked, pulling away from his mouth slightly. He continued to kiss her jawline and down into the cove of her neck. Quietly, she reiterated, clearly nervous, “I’m fr—”

“Mm,” he said against her neck, even as he put his hands around her narrow hips to pull her closer. “What are you frightened of?”

Tilly didn’t know what to say, as the answer was changing by the moment. 

“Pain?” James suggested, his lips grazing over the burn scar on her neck. “You’ve survived far worse. This will be different.”

Tilly was still wet from his mouth and fingers, just a bit earlier, and now she felt an increasingly warm ache at her core. Yes, the prospect of pain was a worry. But that wasn’t exactly it.

They were now separated only by damp and wispy hairs, and the soft wetness coming from her, so she hitched herself up until she was solidly against him, his cock throbbing between their bellies. He groaned again as she lifted herself and lowered herself back down, rubbing herself against him.

“Answer please,” James insisted, breathing harder now, his hands moving beneath her arse to aid her movement. “What are you frightened of?”

Tilly’s breath also thickened as the friction between them increased in tantalizing agony and she shook her head, panting slightly. Her words were gone. She could feel the fingers of James’s hands working at her sex, wending their way into her, softly working her open to him. 

“Is it me that you’re afraid of?” His voice was dark and throaty with want and he seemed slightly amused at that notion. She shook her head again and sought out his mouth with hers.

If she was afraid of him, she wouldn’t be opening to him like a ripe fruit, would she? She wouldn’t be slowly posting in the saddle of his pelvis or reaching between them to put her own fingers against the wetness at her center. She wouldn’t be breathlessly bumping the outer lips of her quim clumsily against the head of his cock.

“Ohhhhhh, hello,” James happily murmured, finally accepting that he wouldn’t get an answer from her other than this.

What she was afraid of was doing anything that would draw the night, and all this, to an early end.

James minutely wiggled down his mattress to properly position himself under her. The head of his cock was aligned against Tilly’s slickness. Gripping the underside of her behind firmly, he rubbed their bits against each other in slow, delicious strokes. She started to lower herself down onto his cock, holding her breath as he held her open with those eloquent fingers. But then, with a sharp inhalation, Tilly abruptly halted her slow descent onto him.

“Don’t. Please,” Tilly warned him, steadying herself by putting her hands on his broad, muscled shoulders. She wanted to manage the depth of him. She wanted to control this part, if nothing else. He’d already laid down such a gentle foundation of letting her set the pace and Tilly needed this to go slowly, lest she shatter into pieces.

“Mm,” James agreed, as amiable as she’d ever seen him, despite her trepidation.

She lowered herself so slowly it was almost imperceptible. Just a slip here, and a scoot there, then a large sigh, and then a bearing down, then a hissing intake of breath, then another try. It took what Tilly thought must feel like ages to James, but he didn’t press her, not down nor up. He waited, patiently, studying her all the while. His mouth moved to hers when she sought kissing, and when she pulled away, he would kiss her throat and the sharp bones of her clavicle. His beard and mouth made it far enough that he kissed the width of her chest, from arm to arm, and then back again, making small grunts and moans of encouragement all the while.

And then, he was in her. Not fully, not yet, but enough. Tilly pulled up and away from him a bit but went down even further, doing what her body was telling her to do. She obeyed the new visceral inner creature that had finally woken all the way up. This was not to be the harried, violent mating of animals, but it also wasn’t the squelching, bellowing rutting that went on in aunt Clara’s cottage. Tilly felt, somewhat headily, that she was as close to James as anyone could get. While it might be true that many women had been … like this, she doubted he’d told the lot of them that they two were alone in all the world.

The deeper he was inside her, the quieter the voice in her head went, which was not at all unpleasant. It was like being released from a kind of bondage. She looked down at James to find his eyes open and looking slightly up at her, his mouth ajar. He nodded twice and urged, in his raspy whisper, “There you are. Easy now.”

“Easy now” was something for which Tilly did not need to be advised. She felt with great conviction that if she moved even one more hair’s breadth that she’d fall off of him in two pieces. Or burst into flame, the fire inside of her lower belly was smoldering so hotly. In fact, she was concentrating so hard on breathing through the pain and pressure of her insides expanding to accommodate James’ thickness that she broke out into a sheen of sweat all over. She shuddered and rested on him like that for some time, her fingers digging savagely into the black tattoos covering his shoulders. Mustering what bravery she had left in her, she tried to will herself to rise on him again, but as she started to, she found the anticipation of pain to be too great. 

Breathlessly, she cried, “I can’t. It’ll hur—”

But before she could finish, James’s mouth closed over hers in a deep kiss and his hands quickly moved from under her arse to her small of her back. If it was intended to calm her, it did. She stayed where she was seated, but as they kissed, the platform beneath her, his hips and thighs, began to gyrate up into her slightly. Expecting pain, Tilly tensed up, which made James deepen the kiss even further and gently knead her rib bones with his thumbs.

He started to speak to her in low, calming tones while he moved into and out of her gently. It took her a few breaths before she realized he wasn’t speaking English. All the same, they were soft and gentle phrases, punctuated by his slow, deep breaths. She was enraptured by the very sound of his words, which almost seemed almost possible for her to understand. The intonation was familiar and soothing. She pulled her head back slightly to watch his mouth, hoping that maybe she might hear them more clearly. 

She might not know what James was saying, but she thought she understood what he meant. As she accepted that he was calming her, she also became aware that he was gently rocking her against him and the pain wasn’t manifesting itself. Cautiously, almost instinctively, she canted the angle of her hips in his lap even as he moved her hips rhythmically against his. It felt good to her, and by the hitch in the middle of one of his mysterious words, it appeared to please him as well. The pace of her rocking began to intensify and she clung to his shoulders with both hands. Tilly had never felt powerful before, but she did feel quite so like this. Her thighs were burning but she rode him with increasing confidence until her legs began to shake and interrupt their coupled rhythm.

James suddenly stilled, mumbled, “ _Kafra_ ,” and looked into Tilly’s eyes with a strained, urgent look. He pressed his lips together. Something was different. Before she knew it, he was pulling her up and off of his legs.

Tilly yelped at the sudden void he’d created inside of her, more out of surprise than actual pain. Had she done something wrong? Was it over? She didn’t expect it to be over like that, with so little fanfare. And so abruptly! Her confusion must have been apparent on her face, because he immediately reached for her, tucking his fingers into the damp tangle of her hair with his thumbs against her jaw. 

“Have you—? Is that—?” she stuttered, stopping just shy of asking if that was it. He exhaled forcefully and swallowed in response.

“I want you on the bed again,” he commanded, without affect, as if he was telling her to pick up more onions at market. His eyes focused on hers and added, “On your back. Open for me.”

Tilly thought momentarily that he meant he wanted to have her like that, on her back, so she obliged him by moving herself to the mattress and laying down flat. She expected him to enter her like that, to have his way with her, but instead, he knelt between her legs, his hands on her thighs, and began to speak in that same strange language. 

A prayer, it almost sounded like, soft and sacred in tone, but Tilly didn’t dare to ask or interrupt him. She felt almost as if he was looking into her, through her, as he spoke. In turn, James placed his hands on different parts of both of their bodies at different words, repeating some phrases multiple times. He tapped himself lightly on the forehead and then hers with the same hand. He lay his hand over his heart, and then hers. When he touched two fingers to his lips and then to hers, before raising two fingers to his temple and then to the rough beams above them both, it hit her: It was a spell. He was casting a spell, but not on her. On _them_.

When he finished speaking, James immediately moved backward and lowered himself to the bed between her thighs, curling his upper arms under her legs and burying his beard into the center of her. Tilly eyes slammed shut and she collapsed fully onto her back, the earth swallowing the both of them completely up until there was nothing but sparks in the darkness.

* * *

James refused to have his satisfaction until Tilly had found hers again. It was a point of pride, now, a resolution, a promise: his being of service to her. He’d gotten dangerously close to meeting his end at her touch more than a few times. The girl was so responsive—her body so wet, so warm, so willing—that he almost lost himself. He wanted to exhaust her first, though, and as he was an old man now, he knew it might take more from him. One of the ways he quelled his own urgency was by performing a short blessing ritual he’d learned across the sea. Another was attending to her with his mouth once more.

The delay of his gratification intensified the result, of course—it always does. How they got there, to the end, he wasn’t entirely sure, as they changed configurations many times in a search for the most pleasurable combination of their bodies. But, when he eventually finished, she was again straddling him, bouncing with considerable enthusiasm on his cock, finally able to take all of him and enjoying that, it seemed, her hands braced against his chest and her hair falling like a curtain around her shoulders. He gripped her hip with one hand and held the other thumb-first against her apex. When she came again, squeezing tightly around his length in the quivering waves of orgasm, he completely lost his head and, with a long, deep groan, spent himself deeply inside Tilly. 

Exhausted, the two of them, and still fused together at the hips, Tilly collapsed on him as he softened inside of her. She finally relaxed into her limp-bodied rest curled on top of him. That suited him fine. He had coats heavier than her, really. James sighed, satisfied, running his fingers through the wet ends of her hair against her lower back until her breath slowed and deepened. Tilly was soon fast asleep on his chest. He drifted off not long after. 

There was someone waiting for James in his dreams: Salish. Anger swelled in him that she would not leave him alone to rest. He said nothing to his dark and black-feather-adorned mother, her face painted but serene. She was an apparition standing above the bed, looking down at their naked, corporeal forms. For once, she wasn’t shrieking at him.

Unashamed and serious, she briefly looked over Tilly’s bony spine and sleeping face. She had a message for him. He didn’t want to hear it but he wasn’t capable of shutting the vision of her out or, by some force of will, waking himself up. James lay exposed and inwardly fuming at her intrusion. Would he have no privacy and no peace, even now?

Salish advised her son without moving her lips, her message halting and seeming to come from a great distance despite her apparent proximity. Just a whisper, confirming, “A witch is born … not made.”                                       


	9. Coming Day

CHAPTER 8: COMING DAY

Three days.

They didn’t leave the house for three days. Not James, nor Tilly. In fact, neither of them left the attic—or the bed—unless they absolutely had to. For three glorious days.

The first morning, the smell of Tilly still clinging to his beard and the image of his mother still fresh in his mind, James went down to the kitchen to find Brace stomping around like crabby old gran. With a fire just coming to life in the hearth, Brace was wearing his coat and hat indoors. He barely gave a glance at James crossing the threshold before letting loose with what had him so cross.

“Where’s the god-forsaken maid gone off to? There’s no tea and the fi—”

He looked up then, mid-screed, in time to spot Delaney the younger navigating past the table without a stitch on. Not even a pair of ratty slippers. James gave him a quick nod and cleared his throat.

Brace, ever the old salt, set down the kettle and put his hand on his hip to better express his disapproval as he took in the whole sight of him: James’s hair likely sticking out at all angles, lips maybe a bit swollen from use, sleep creases in all manners of unseemly places, and an expression much like a cat that just ate the proverbial canary. Exasperated, Brace looked him over and bleated, “Christ! James. Cover y’self, man. Can’t take this sort of exhibition on an empty stomach!”

He punctuated his theatrics by grabbing a nearby tea towel and hucking it in James’ general direction. Cheekily, James caught the towel and snapped it neatly over his shoulder, grunting in acknowledgment.

Brace shook his head and grumbled, “Well, then! Proud of yourself, are you? I WAS about to ask if you knew where the maid was, or if you were poorly … but I take it that she’s resting in your bed and you’re quite well.”

“Mm, quite well,” James agreed flatly, careful not to reveal his smug, self-satisfied grin as he reached into the larder for the remainder of a loaf of rye. “Do you need her help in fixing the tea, Brace, or will you manage?”

James wrapped the crust of bread in the towel and tucked it between his elbow and hip, also grabbing a dented pewter pitcher full of what he hoped was water. At the fire, Brace hung the full kettle up and frowned back in James’ direction.

“Don’t gloat. Doesn’t suit you, boyo,” he groused. Even still, James thought he caught a glimmer in Brace’s eye as he shrugged back at the old man. Could be mistaken. He could actually be cross about the lack of tea, but James didn’t think so.

With that, he turned his back on Brace and started to make way back upstairs, but the man called after him, “What about your meeting with—”

“Cholmondeley can wait,” James said, closing the door to the kitchen behind him. His feet were bloody freezing and he was keen to get back to the relative warmth of the attic. And Tilly.

Through the door, he heard Brace snap, “It’s Atticus you’re meeting with!”

“Fine! He’ll wait even longer,” James growled, not caring if he waited or not.

 

In the attic, James returned to find Miss Matilda sitting up in bed, still naked but newly awake, looking well rumpled but not altogether worse for wear. A small twinge of something made itself known in James’s gut.

She’d dreamt of her mother, Tilly said. Hypatia’s first appearance in a long while, too, and a strange one, she mused sleepily. The dream was filled with rabbits of all sizes and colors, like it was early spring instead of the dour middle of winter.

James spooked a bit at the coincidence of both of their mothers appearing to them in the night. Perhaps a performing a blessing that called, in part, on their ancestors wasn’t the brightest notion. He set the paltry provisions down on his desk, realizing at the same time that he’d neglected to bring any cups. He wasn’t thinking entirely straight. It was a long night.

The cups, too, could wait. He sat down on the side of his bed, listening with great interest to the girl tell him her dream. She recalled that her mother had started speaking to her in a language she couldn’t understand, something that had never happened before. Tilly looked forlorn that James brought her into a half embrace, combing her tangled hair back from her forehead. Her skin was warm under his fingers.

“Is that water?” Tilly asked hopefully, peeking over his shoulder.

“Mm, yes,” James nodded. “But I’ve not brought up a cup.”

“I’ll go down. I should start the tea for Mr Brace,” Tilly offered, stretching her arms in front of her. He was about to tell her not to bother, but she stood up from the bed and immediately sat back down, her knees visibly shaking.

James put his arm back around her protectively, worried that she was maybe faint. There had been a lot of … _physicality_ last night. And also again this morning, at dawn, in the dim light that filtered in through the circular window by the bed. She’d put her mouth on him for the first time, a special return of favor that surprised and delighted all involved. Mostly him.

“All right, Tilly?” he murmured, bringing her closer with his arm slung around her narrow shoulders. She was so slight, and pale too, when she wasn’t blushing. He already conspired to find new ways to make her cheeks flush.

She replied with a nod but leaned into him all the same, resting. Maybe it had been too much. They’d moved into whatever enchantment this was at a breakneck pace and already traveled so far, despite hardly leaving the bed. He had to remind himself that the girl was stepping into a whole new world, one that he’d already inhabited (and disinhibited) before.

Paradigms shift, that’s what they do, but she was fresh and still quite green. For whatever fantasies he’d entertained of her when she was the shy, innocent maid downstairs, tending to him but turning to stone when he made eye contact, she was something new now. Stronger. James had a pressing urge to step completely out of the cold, cruel world he’d manifested outside of the house and start a new one in the attic, a better one, inhabited by just her and him. No East India Company, no gunpowder, no Nootka. He could teach her about dreams and she could teach him the benefits of juniper tea. She could be a wise woman and he could be her cunning man. It wouldn’t be so hard to make that vision come to fruition. Just a matter of signing over a few documents, really. Be done with it. Move out of the city. Maybe take up fishing. Hunting. Get a dog. Or six.

He shook his head to rattle away the fantasy. _So easy to lose focus when at peace_ , he thought. Especially for someone who’d barely known a moment’s peace. Yet, even then, taking a day or two for himself shouldn’t raise issue. The world ought to keep on turning, whether or not he watched over it with a wary eye.

At the present, however, James’s decidedly unwary eyes caught sight of the pitcher on the table and something unrelated to the outside world occurred to him. Cups. Patting Tilly on the leg, he left her warm skin and went to rummage around in an old trunk of his father’s. Actually, his mother’s. Her dowry chest had been immediately stuffed in the attic and forgotten about upon her arrival to London and her transformation from Salish into Anna Delaney.

When he returned to the bed, it was with two small earthenware vessels. They hadn’t been used or even considered in decades, but they still had some usefulness left in them.

 

* * *

The second morning, James finally ventured outside of the attic to do as one does in the morning: rummage around in the larder for food (surely in short supply), piss against the far wall in the back garden (his preferred locale to do so), a quick thumb through the mail to see if anything needed immediate attention (it wouldn’t), and a check to see if he and Tilly had the house to themselves or if Brace was skulking about. As soon as he opened the door from the attic, however, he saw a parcel, wrapped neatly with butcher’s twine, resting on the top step.

Immediately suspicious, he toed it with his bare foot. Didn’t seem like it contained anything alive or recently butchered. He crouched down and picked it up: lightweight, dry goods. Fabric. A small piece of folded paper slipped out of the bottom bit of twine and upon retrieval, he saw “Matilda” written in a fine, ladylike hand. Ah. Lorna.

“Something for you, Tilly,” he called, walking stiffly back into the attic, where Tilly was washing at the basin by the fire. He shrugged, reading the rest of the note and leaving the attic door open. “Seems the very thoughtful Ms Bow—ahem, Mrs Delaney—has delivered you some of her things to wear.”

Of course she had. And also, she let herself in again. But when? James wondered if she’d lingered outside his door at all, perhaps listening to the sound of them talking. Or fucking. Both of which they’d done plenty of, their second night together. Lorna didn’t seem the type to eavesdrop, honestly, but then again, why not leave the parcel in the foyer? Why at the top of the stairs?

“What? For _me_?” Tilly replied back a bit too loudly as she must’ve thought he was already headed down the stairs. Preoccupied with unselfconsciously rubbing a washcloth under her arms with the cool water, her posture changed when she saw James had returned. She became aware that he was spectating her bath and, unaccustomed at being watched, she blushed furiously and stopped what she was doing.

There it was. That pinkness flooding into her cheeks. The flush in her face matched the color of her nipples, pert as new roses from the chill of the basin water, as well as the delicate skin between her legs that he’d become intimately familiar with. Her scars, too, grew rosy. He let his eyes travel across her underfed but not unwomanly body, happy for the fresh vantage point, delighting in making her squirm under his lascivious scrutiny.

James lay the package down on the table while keeping his eyes on her. “Yes, for you,” he murmured, approaching her. She moved to cover herself out of what he deduced was girlish modesty, which she might well have known was the quickest way to get James to lay his hands on her. “If you accept her gifts,” he warned her, reaching out to cup the undersides of her full breasts, rubbing his thumbs over the slightly damp skin, “she’ll forever treat you as her dolly, I promise you.”

Tilly looked up at him shyly as he drew near to her. Her eyes, a rich green hazel, reminded him of the faraway green flash left behind when the sun set into the ocean and he thought, for a second, that he smelled salt.

“I thought you had business to attend to downstairs,” she asked lightly, craning her face up to kiss James’s neck and ostensibly to close the gap between them and compromise his view of her. James accepted the kiss and her stealthy way of regaining modesty, smoothly moving his hands from her breasts to her back, and then lower, pulling her into him.

“Mm,” he grunted. He did have business to attend to, but now he wanted her again, and the back garden could wait a few minutes more.

“I should make you something to eat. And Mr Brace must be—” Tilly began, but James squeezed her to him so that she might feel him, hardening, against her abdomen. “Oh,” she exhaled, relenting to him. She then closed her eyes happily and, reaching up to encircle his neck, clasped her hands behind his head.

James took the opportunity to close his mouth onto hers and scoop her up by her bottom, in one motion lifting her up until her legs could wrap around his waist. Holding her easily, he found their way over to the desk, where he would have her on a pile of maps of the continents across the Atlantic.

 

After that, he would reluctantly dress, for warmth more than appearances, and go down to the garden while she finished her bath. She would put on a gently used but still handsome velvet robe from Lorna. A bit long for her, maybe, but still the most luxurious thing she’d ever had on. James would sit at the table in the kitchen as she cooked, stoking the fire and smoking a pipe while telling her the story of how Ms Bow had come to marry old Horace, and become his stepmother. Tilly and he would then share half the skillet bread she’d made, along with a pot of stew fashioned from the last of the vegetables and a pitiful shred of salt pork she’d discovered in the pantry in which Tilly used to sleep.

Brace returned from the outside world, eventually, happening upon them just as the two of them were finishing their meal.

“Oh good,” he grumped at them, the perpetual Delaney extra wheel. “You’ve come up for air, then.”

James pushed a bowl of stew across the table and Brace immediately relaxed and gratefully accepted the meal. But that wasn’t all. Brace was always good for another barb.

“And there’s supper!” Brace seated himself and, after tearing off a hunk of bread, added glibly, “Should we open a bottle to celebrate that you haven’t fucked yourselves to an early grave?”

At the hearth, Tilly coughed nervously and gathered the fabric of her new robe in front of her so she might squat before the fire to check the kettle. All Brace got in return from James was a pointed glare. Brace dismissed his joke with a wave of his fingers. “Beg pardon, miss,” he apologized to Tilly. He'd be wise to know being coarse to the woman was neither kindly or advisable.

Lowering his voice, Brace’s expression darkened as he said as an aside to James, “There’s work to be done. How long do you intend to stay in that attic?”

James didn’t particularly care for Brace’s tone—he bloody well knew there was work to be done! Of all people, he knew there was work to be done. It was his work! Wars don’t win themselves. And, without a commander or promises of the spoils of war, his shiftless group of miscreants was likely to take a better bid, sooner rather than later.

He had to admit, then, it was a valid question. He puffed at his pipe a few times and rubbed the back of his head with his free hand, considering the answer. He was tempted to say “as long as I damned well please” but finally acquiesced.

“Argh. Tomorrow,” James grumbled, regretting leaving the world of the attic behind in the first place. There were too many people depending on him as it was, and soon he wouldn’t be able to take a walk by the water without disappointing someone. “I’ll be back to the docks tomorrow, Brace.”

He stole a quick glance at Tilly’s face, to catch her reaction to this announcement. It wasn’t much of a honeymoon, in the end. Just three nights in an attic. Three days of talking and skin and dreams and sweat, as they learned each other. Tonight, he would begin to teach her how to control her dreams, as promised. But now, beside him, Tilly’s face was passive as she looked into the fire. After a moment, she reached out to him and lay her hand on his knee fondly. James haltingly lowered his hand from the back of his head to her hand, lightly squeezing the small fragility of her fingers in an unfamiliar gesture. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d held someone’s hand. Had he ever?

Tilly nodded slightly and then pressed her hand to his knee to stand up from the fire.

 

* * *

The third morning, James awoke to the disorienting sensation of Tilly crawling on top of him, straddling his hips. It was still dark, well before the sun would come up. When she bent over to find his mouth in a kiss, her face was wet and her shoulders were shaking. She’d been weeping. James was ashamed he hadn’t noticed. He’d been dead asleep, it seemed. After the previous rigorous entanglement that left the both of them breathless and her a bit sore, they opted for more spiritual congress. Many of the previous hours were passed with talk of ritual and dream work, including a demonstration of the actual practice, which was also demanding, albeit in inexplicable, uncommon ways. He’d fallen asleep directly after, with Tilly serenely tucked against his side.

“Hm?” he whispered in the darkness, between kisses. He reached to pull the girl into a tight embrace. “What is it?” He hesitated to listen to the room for a moment. Was it still a dream? Had he traveled without knowing it? Was there danger?

“Just a dream, just a—,” Tilly explained in a low voice, her words hitched in her throat as she pushed herself up until she was seated on him. She ground her hips against him, and she was, much to his delight, already wet and soaking through the fabric of his nightshirt. That must have been some dream. His hands moved to her hips instinctively as she bowed over him. She was already breathing quickly, but otherwise fell silent, her hands pressed to his chest.

It was clear what she wanted and needed. He didn’t completely, or even incompletely, understand what sort of dream might compel her to cry even as she wanted him to fill her. But his body overrode his brain and responded to Tilly in kind, sitting up so he could kiss and lick the skin of her breasts and shoulders and moved his hips along with hers until he was rooted deep inside her.

 

Later, after they finished, and then slept again, and then woke again, and cleaned each other up so as to be presentable to the outside world—him to the docks, her to the market—Tilly reluctantly told him her dream, recounting it with humble sincerity. Her face was grave and her eyes searched him for … something. Tenderness, maybe. Approval. An answer. Some comfort. He didn’t know what to say, so he just listened with sincere care and, when she was finished, held her to him. They stayed like that for a long while, until leaving the attic could be avoided no longer.

He made his way from the house and along the frigid and stinking streets still thinking about her and how she’d come to him—and then on him—in the darkness before dawn. The tenderness between them was something new and wild, but old and serene at the same time. He’d not let on, but he was shaken by the uncertain look on her face as she told him that, in her dream, she’d been given a message for him. He was haunted by a disorienting feeling that this—all of it—was preordained, unavoidable. Inevitable.

Tilly was still on his mind when he got to the docks and discovered that everything had gone to shit in his absence.


	10. All Thoughts Are Prey to Some Beast

CHAPTER 9: ALL THOUGHTS ARE PREY TO SOME BEAST

Holding court at the Dolphin Inn in Atticus’s stead, French Bill looked uncharacteristically uneasy. Felt it, too. Usually, he wasn’t bothered by much, other than maybe fleas. Or mockery. This involved neither, but he felt his ears burning nonetheless. It wasn’t easy for him to relay information to Delaney, for a variety of reasons: One, Bill possessed a wretched stutter that had plagued him since childhood; two, what he had to say was almost entirely bad news; and, three, Delaney had demonstrated many times over that he was not quite right in the head, and he was likely to gouge a man’s eyes out just for conveying a message.

When French Bill, a man of some level-headedness and reputed sobriety, looked uneasy, it made James feel uneasy. It didn’t show on his face, but uneasiness such as this had a tendency, historically speaking, to drive him to make rash decisions. Rash decisions often resulted in quite a lot of violence and someone picking their teeth out of the mix of blood and shit that coated the cobblestones at the docks. 

James took French Bill’s presence and Atticus’s absence to mean that Atticus was probably attending to some nasty business that surely should have been attended to by James himself. Had James not been enjoying his respite at home, was the implication. French Bill kept his words brief and his hands on the table.

The ship was damaged by a fire, which James had already learned from a very cross Brace upon reaching the offices. No one died and the hull was sound, but their accumulated stores had been affected, which would be expensive to replace. 

French Bill watched him carefully. He scratched at a bit of wax on the table with a ragged thumbnail. How to say this next bit?

"What else,” James prompted. He unbuttoned his coat but kept it on, waving away a trussed-up woman who looked to be hawking drink or fanny, whichever a man might prefer. In this case, neither.

French Bill, the tall one with the audacious beard, had originally been part of Atticus’s crew. But now he was among the league of the damned and was therefore James’s man, which might have been why no one had a knife sticking into their eye socket. The news was that bad.

The shipment of solvents that Cholmondeley said was crucial to stabilizing the next batch of was gone. Disappeared. Hadn’t reached London and of course, it being off the books … it wasn’t clear the barrels had ever left their point of origin, if they existed at all. It was a disaster for the timeline, the chemist said, at their meeting—which they’d only had without him because he wasn’t available, see. French Bill assured him, needlessly, that everyone knew Cholmondeley was prone to grand statements.

And then, yeh, there was the nasty business with the woman. But, French Bill deferred, of course James already knew all about that.

“How is she?” the bearded man inquired, a bit too casually.

_What business? What woman?_

James blinked slowly, keeping his shoulders square to the man across from him. Reacting to that inquiry would expose too much.

After an expressionless moment in which he met Bill’s dark eyes, James replied with an ill-tempered, “How is who.”

There was a long pause in which the man across from him processed James’s response. “The w-woman,” French Bill offered, swallowing his words and looking, for all the world, like a man who had just fucked up. Apologetically, he added, “Your _friend_.”

James’s stomach turned to acid and he glowered at Bill. His “friend.” His friend, the woman. With a dry mouth, he continued to feign ignorance. “To whom are you referring?”

French Bill valued his life. He wasn’t afraid to die, at least intellectually, but when it happened, it sure wasn’t going to be because he said the wrong thing when he was trying to be kind to a man about his woman. He tilted his head a bit, clearing his throat apologetically. “The … the actress. Your, uh, … Mrs Delaney.”

James tried not to look relieved that it wasn’t Tilly, but he was. A half a beat and a stab of shame later, he thought of Lorna. He’d promised to protect her and if his promises couldn’t be honored after three days away from business, perhaps he’d be better not to promise anyone anything ever again.

French Bill explained, best as he could, that someone had come after her, Mrs Delaney, just the night before. It was assumed, by Atticus, to be a move to get to Delaney himself. Not a company man, though, this time. Someone who knew just enough about their operation to be dangerous. Someone from the docks, probably working an angle after overhearing someone’s boast. Atticus was happy to attend to that person on James’s behalf; in fact, that’s why he was out just then—to sort things out. Otherwise, he’d have been at the Dolphin to tell James all this, Bill said earnestly. 

The woman was likely fine, Bill added. The runner, young Robert, said that no blood was spilt, though the attacker was still unaccounted for. Cholmondeley had been there with Mrs Delaney, when it happened, just after her stage performance. 

“Oi! Should I—” French Bill called after James, who, at “when it happened,” had already re-donned his hat and rushed to the door.

 

Lorna was, in fact, fine. She was worked up, of course—firing a pistol, tiny as it may be, at a man was still absolutely terrifying—and the door to her garret above the theater needed to be replaced, but she was fine. When James entered her small apartment, he’d been prepared for the worst. Bodies and gore. Instead he was met with the reassuring scene of Cholmondeley handing Lorna a cup of tea. Lorna was more pale than ever and clearly uncomfortable with the chemist’s attention, but she relaxed when she saw James come through the door.

“Ah! James. You’ve come. I’m … so very sorry for the uproar,” Lorna apologized, taking the tea but setting it aside immediately. “It all happened rather quickly. He—”

“She’s stronger than y—” Cholmondeley blurted, but stopped himself when he caught a glimpse of the rage just under the surface of James’s expression. Quickly amending his statement, he said, “She’s stronger than _she_ thought.”

Lorna looked away and sat back against the chair, looking annoyed at Cholmondeley’s comment. Almost on cue, Cholmondeley reached over and patted her on the arm, adding, “Well, you ARE.” He glanced at James, a look of smug but misguided possessiveness, before he shortly went back to looking at Lorna with obvious affection. Lorna grumbled under her breath and reached for her tea.

James, still on guard and breathless from his breakneck journey from the docks, looked around the room. No blood visible, but he spied a broken chair and there was the matter of the ruined door. 

A man had come for her, she explained, drunk and ranting about Delaney. He kicked in the door and lurched at her, but she was lucky enough to have her small pistol close at hand. She’d missed him, but it was all over, and she didn’t expect the man would try his luck with her again. James nodded, having never doubted that Lorna was strong or capable.

Cholmondeley interjected to say that Lorna, haphazard aim or not, was quite effective in scaring the man off, while he barely had a role in repelling the miscreant. Giddy once again on his own gas, he cheerfully admitted to James that he’d even said that the man had gotten the wrong girl, at any rate. Delaney was involved _with his maid_ , he’d told him. Not with the esteemed actress, his _stepmother,_ for crissakes. Cholmondeley recounted this flippantly, perhaps as a way to make light of the situation and gain favor with Lorna.

Noticing that James didn’t take the information with the levity intended, Lorna sighed, feeling slightly mortified at the memory. But, when it occurred to her what he’d done, what she herself had done by sharing this private information with Cholmondeley, she gasped and moved to stand. 

“James,” she exclaimed, alarmed. Her eyes confirmed what James already knew: She’d talked out of turn and revealed one of his secrets. 

James didn’t deliberate over this new information for long. He fixed a glare at Cholmondeley and instructed the two of them to stay where they were and to keep their fucking mouths shut. Then he spun on his heel and rushed back to Chamber House, hoping the entire wretched way that Tilly was locked safely in their attic.

 

* * * 

Lorna’s cast-off coat fell so long on Tilly that it nearly grazed the top of her boots. She left House Delaney for the market with a full purse, an empty belly, and her mind swimming with thoughts. Three days in the attic and she was different, new. She felt like Inanna, the first daughter of the moon, reborn after her three days in the underworld, everything stripped away from her. Those three days before Inanna’s resurrection—thousands of years before Jesus Christ was said to have risen again—were thought to represent the period in the lunar cycle known as the dark moon, or the new moon. Halfway through Tilly’s own moon cycle.

Thoughts of James washed over Tilly like waves as she walked to market: the thick muscles of his broad back, framed by the brutal black ink of his tattoos; that image of a bird, wings outstretched, that lived between his shoulders; his strange words, like oaths, like prayers; the dark and familiar smell of him; how he held her, wordlessly, after she told him the contents of last night’s dream. 

In the dream, Hypatia, looking like the May Queen, had come to her to tell her she, Matilda, would return that which was forgotten to a new world. Those were the words: “that which was forgotten.” Tilly would soon bear Delaney’s child, Hypatia said, and together they would journey to the deep, wet forests of James’s poor, forgotten mother. Revenants all. 

James had embraced her but she could see that he was affected—and worse, conflicted—by this information. How could he not be? How could _she_ not be? Why did it feel like liberation, to have a future where one was never imagined?

Then again, how could one receive a message like that and go out to blithely shop for parsnips?

 

When Tilly rounded the corner behind the row of houses that would lead her home, she saw an unexpected tableau. There was never anyone in the lane when she passed, aside from domestics and the errant worker or junk hauler. But, that day, there were three men who looked to be in some kind of altercation. One of them was James, she could tell by his form and the way he stood, slightly stooped, as if he was listening closely to an older man who was talking very fast. 

She almost called out to James, but stopped herself when she saw the rigidity of his posture. The other two men were strangers to her, both dressed shabbily and coated in a layer of grime. Not gentlemen and not soldiers, they both looked like they’d crawled out of the sea and straight into the alley behind House Delaney.

Disquieted, Tilly hiked her parcels from her hands to the crooks of her elbow as she took in her options. She hadn’t been seen yet. Best to turn around, although that would mean going back to the street and entering the house through the front—something that was forbidden by James and by simple logic. It was dangerous, but surely no more dangerous than this. Her heart began to race.

Almost as soon as Tilly, driven by intuition, started to make her way closer to them, a flurry of activity broke out. Sparked after words were exchanged that Tilly couldn’t quite hear, she saw one man backing away and the other in combat with James. It wasn’t a well-matched fight, clearly, because James had the upper hand almost immediately. Grappling, he quickly had the man backed up against the wall and was raining short but powerful blows at the unfortunate man’s face and abdomen. The man, older and slower than James, tried protect himself by flapping his hands uselessly at James’s chest.

The third man, standing on the other side of the gate, had a compass rose tattoo spanning the dome of his bald head. Hands aloft in apparent deference to James, he was still moving away from the fight. In a rough voice, he spat out, “Had nothin’ to do with it, mate! Came here to stop ’im from doin’ damage. He’s his own man, James. Do him, if you want. Means fuck all to me.”

His opponent relented, bested, by cradling his injured hands protectively against his stomach as he spoke. James stilled, listening, his jaw set and nostrils flaring. In a flash, his left hand was around the man’s throat, holding him fast against the bricks of the back garden wall, and the other hand was pointing a small dagger at the man with the tattooed scalp. Tilly jolted at the sight of the knife, every bit of muscle memory telling her to turn on her heel and run away, fast as she could, until she was back at Aunt Clara’s. But something else in her mind reasoned, that the knife was in _James’s_ hand. She was bound to him. She would be protected. 

At the end of James’s outstretched arm, the man was bloody and raw after the brief fight. His whole face appeared to be split open, nose and mouth and brow, from chin to hairline, but his eyes were wild, awake, and he was sputtering and begging bloodily at James’s ear.

“Atticus,” James barked at the man who was even still backing away. Tilly couldn’t tell if James was injured or if he’d gone entirely mad, so she maintained a quiet, steady approach. Through clenched teeth, James instructed Atticus, “Stay right where you are … or I will kill you first.” 

Tilly, stunned, stopped moving toward the men. More than close enough to hear what they were saying, she wanted to be sure to remain out of arm’s reach. _Kill you first_ , he’d said. _Kill._ The words sounded even more strange and foreign to her ears than the Twi oaths he’d made in the attic. Yes, she’d washed blood from his clothing more than once but … killing?

Atticus, his manner now more that of a friend than a combatant, stopped moving backward and shrugged. He visibly relaxed as James deftly moved the knife from pointing at him to pressed tightly against the pinned man’s abdomen. James was almost vibrating, he was so coiled and tense—ready, it seemed, to drive the blade into the man’s ribs.

With the man sputtering in his grasp, James turned his focus on him and growled, “Who are you and why—”

“That there’s Fitzy,” Atticus interjected. James snapped his head over to glare at the man who seemed to be his friend. Atticus shrugged again and continued, seemingly unbothered, “What? It’s Fitzwilliams. Worked under that Dublin crew, ay? Dunno his—” 

James shook his head in frustration. “Atticus …” he warned, and Atticus shut his mouth. He clenched the man’s throat with more force and a hideous burbling noise came out of him, indecipherable, but still pleading. Turning back to his target, poor damaged Fitzy, James repeated, “WHY are you here?” 

The man couldn’t answer intelligibly, but he gurgled in response and flicked his gaze over James’s shoulder. He was indicating her, Tilly realized with a start. She was standing not too far from the scene. Tilly quickly shook her head, as if she could will the words back into his mouth. But it was too late: James noticed the gesture, tightened his grip on the man’s throat and turned his head to see what he was looking at, as did Atticus.

As soon as James set his still-wild eyes on her, he groaned in consternation. His expression then changed slightly, to one of surprise and relief, before settling to a strange display of anger and chagrin. Like he’d been caught doing something very naughty. Tilly started to advance again, one palm held out to James. She opened her mouth to say his name, in the hopes to soothe him, but a glare from him stopped her.

Whatever machinations he did in his mind, he did them quickly, because he suddenly turned back to the bloodied man, deftly sheathed his dagger back into its place, and belted the man cleanly with a right-handed jab between his eyes. The man, finally and mercifully unconscious, went limp in James’s grasp and crumpled against the wall to the back garden. 

Atticus spoke up, just then, asking with a surprised titter as he looked from James back to Tilly and then James again, “Is this her, then!? Oi! What are the fuckin’ chances? Just come straight up the—”

James cut the man off with a fierce look. Then, with a grunt, he gestured her toward the ajar gate. Tilly moved closer to the garden but her eyes soon fell to the unmoving man on the ground.

“Is he …?” she asked, stopping short of saying “dead.” _Dying_. She was tangentially aware that Atticus was peering at her, cocking his head to better see her face. 

“No,” James replied flatly. He softened a bit when he saw Tilly flinch, urging in a low growl, “Go inside, Tilly.”

Tilly moved to obey him when she saw that the man’s canine tooth had been knocked ajar. It was jutting out from between his split-open lips but that wasn’t nearly the worst of it. His face was destroyed. She didn’t know what he looked like before the fight, but he looked like chopped mutton now. His breath was straining in and out from his throat, a wet, viscous snore. He wasn’t dead just yet, but it didn’t look good for him.

“James? Come with me,” Tilly whispered, stopping to put her hand on his forearm. She looked up at him, begging him with her eyes. “James. Please. Are you going to …?”

_Are you going to kill him?_

James looked away from her to the man at their feet. He answered plainly, with a short grunt, as if he couldn’t imagine why she’d ask such a thing, “Mm. Yes.”

Atticus cleared his throat, interrupting once again to say, nonchalantly, “Nah, he won’t, miss. Just go on inside.”

Tilly paused to look at James again, swallowing hard and willing herself to take a breath. She could smell the stink of urine and booze on the man at their feet, see the blood on James’s knuckles, and feel the tension in his body as she brushed by him. She wished with all of her might that they were back in the attic, together, away from the stench and the violence. He was gentle there, and free. Now he looked like a caged beast, performing tricks for a few hunks of meat. 

She searched his eyes for some kind of explanation, putting her other hand on his chest. There was none to be found, though, at least not in words. The words he gave her were muttered under his breath: “Go to the attic. Lock the door. Open it only for me.”

It was his expression that told her what his words wouldn’t: She had seen him be a monster and he was, possibly for the first time in his life, ashamed.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for your patience as I lost my mojo for a few Fridays there. Big thanks to the friends who got me through my Dark Night of the Fic on this plot-heavy chapter. I'll get back to the sexy stuff soon. This bit just needed to escape.


	11. Cold Discovery

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please be advised that rough sex with no explicit consent given occurs in the second act of this chapter. Oh, and also murder, but I feel like I need to give a content warning about the sexual content, not the murdering. Minors, avert your eyes please.

CHAPTER 10: COLD DISCOVERY

Tilly did not immediately lock herself in the attic, as James had instructed. With her coat still on and her heart racing, she deposited the groceries and the flour tin on the table and quickly sorted through a mess of burlap and sack cloth bags in the pantry to find the items she needed to make her moon tea, which she intended to drink without remorse. So hot it would scald her throat and hopefully purify her whole body.

While the water heated over the kitchen fire, Tilly tore off her coat and put on her apron with shaking hands, busying herself with putting away the food so she wouldn’t go to the back window to see what was happening in the back garden, where James and Atticus were surely discussing what to do with Fitzwilliams. Whatever it was they were doing, Tilly was entirely torn between needing to look but not wanting to see.

Tilly found that she was furious—with James, with herself, with the man who’d come to harm her, even with the wincing look that Atticus had given her as soon as he caught sight of her scars. Anger didn’t come naturally to her, but after being sent inside to lock herself in the attic like she was a helpless child, she felt utterly devoured by it.

This newly revealed James, whose hands had gently stroked her breasts that morning, had beaten a man almost to death in the afternoon. With the same hands! Like it was nothing! 

Also, that man indicated he’d come for her—for unimportant her! Why? To harm her? Was she suddenly important because she was important to someone important? What had she been before she came to work for James? Nothing? Is that how a woman’s worth was earned—by the man whose bed she shared? How enraging. She fumed as she petulantly threw the root vegetables into a basket and lit the candles in their holders. 

She was feeling so overwhelmed with emotion that she felt almost winded, so she stopped her busy work to steady herself at the table. Once still, she found there was a feeling beneath her anger, something new but seemingly seeded deep inside her body. It was sick, almost unspeakable, and had been brought on presumably what she just saw in the alley. James, Mr Delaney, beat a man savagely before her very eyes. 

Witnessing James in that context—one in which he was clearly practiced and at his most powerful—gave her a thrill not dissimilar to the stirs and jolts she felt when he touched her in his bed. In both locations and probably many others, James was powerful and in control, focused, sharp-edged with intent. His strong, fierce body was like his tool, as well as his weapon. It was also the sole source and the object of any pleasure or affection in Tilly’s life, a notion that was hard for her to reconcile. She loved a weapon.

Tilly had never enjoyed any sort of power or control in her own life. Never once, not one shred. Violence was something that happened to her, again and again. Then, each time, she recovered, and kept on, until the next terrible thing happened and the cycle began anew. 

The first time she’d ever felt any kind of power or control was fresh and recent: in the attic with James. Her softness, her gentle nature held power there—but only there, only then, and only with him. She could never use it as a weapon. Maybe a tool, but never a weapon.

Transfixed by her thoughts, she gazed down into the bowl in which her small pile of dry moon tea sat like an empty bird’s nest. The kettle on the fire had not yet come to boil, but soon, the tea would do its work in her body to make her moon come and prevent a baby from finding purchase inside her. 

Like a charge of lightning on a stormy night, something occurred to her: This _was_ control. This was power. Both, entirely hers. She could control whether or not James Keziah Delaney’s seed implanted in her womb, whether or not she carried his child, whether or not she stayed with him after he destroyed a man in front of her. People had said disgusting and awful things about him but she never truly believed any of it—until now. Now she knew there was at least a kernel of truth in what they said.

But, yet, the persona of “that devil Delaney” also seemed like a a carefully cultivated legend. James did nothing to disavow the legend or discourage it. In fact, he added to it, it seemed, any chance he got. It dawned on Tilly that this persona might be necessary in a life where men came to House Delaney to hunt him and harm those he cared for. The devil persona, like James’ cunning, his strength and brutality, was also a tool. And a weapon used to bring fear to those who meant to destroy him.

Something in her heart rang out, bold and clear: He might be a killer, but he was so in the service of _protecting_ her. Never before had someone cared to protect her. Even her aunt Clara would just as well seen her die in the fire that killed her mother and brother. 

James' monstrous persona was certainly not who he was when they were together in the attic. He would never hurt her, she was certain of that, just as she was increasingly certain that his wild reputation was crucial to his (and now _her_ ) survival. Being under James Keziah Delaney’s care was not unlike having a lion for a pet, she imagined. Or a devil. And, as the saying goes: Better the devil you know.

Tilly took a deep breath and unconsciously pressed her hand against the junction of her legs, firmly, through layers of apron and dress and underclothes, to where she was surprised to find an urgent ache for him.

The kettle started to steam at the same moment that James stormed back into the house, slamming the door that led to the garden behind him. As soon as he caught sight of Tilly standing at the end of the table, staring into a bowl like she was scrying, he roared, “Tilly! WHY have you not gone to the attic?”

* * *  

Tilly didn’t respond. She stood there as if she were in a trance, eyes fixed at the bowl of twigs and stems on the table before her, with one hand pressed against her skirts and the other palm-down against her breastbone. James was infuriated by her pose and all else. 

He’d abruptly left Atticus and the body of Fitzwilliams in the garden to wait until nightfall, when they’d dispose of it at the river. He came back into the house only to—fuck if he knew. Get his coat, check to make sure he’d shut the front door in his haste to find the girl, maybe fetch some brandy? At the very least, he wanted to check on the girl, who’d likely be upset after what she’d witnessed. Or, maybe even—if she was wise—she’d be hurrying out the front door to leave him to his chosen hell. 

Instead, she’d ignored his direct command—which was for her own fucking safety, one might add. She wasn’t even looking at him! She just stood there in the kitchen, not looking upset at all. Still as a tomb and twice again as silent, which baffled James, a man who was not easily baffled. 

“MATILDA,” he repeated hotly, barking in her direction even as he moved quickly through the kitchen. He was wound up tight, almost painfully so, after all that bother in the alley. Worse, there’d been no catharsis for him, no release, as his knife had remained bloodlessly sheathed in his belt until the sour-smelling end. As he yelled Tilly’s name, his voice bellowing through the quiet kitchen, he also impetuously kicked over the chair in front of the hearth, sending it careening into the cast iron kettle with a loud, satisfying toll.

That got her attention and he was glad for it. In a flash, he was standing right next to her, almost breathing down her neck, practically vibrating with new, misplaced anger. Tilly looked away from the steaming, swinging kettle and turned to face him. And yet, she still said nothing!

“Woman, why won’t you _fucking_ speak to me?” James huffed, noisily pushing the table away from them both instead of doing what he really wanted to do, which was shake Tilly by the shoulders and make her respond to him. Make her understand. Make her make _him_ understand what was going on in that head of hers. 

He stared down at the girl, feeling quite breathless and taut with rage. Tilly’s eyes were open wide and her nostrils slightly flared; her breaths were also quick and shallow. Was she ... _angry_? With _him_? For goddamned what? Saving her? James searched her expression for some kind of clue. The exact moment that he noticed, effecting small twinge in his groin, that her skin was flushed, she broke eye contact with him. Her gaze settled on his mouth and suddenly he knew precisely what she was feeling. She _wanted_ him. Like this. A monster. A devil. 

“Ahh,” he exhaled thoughtfully. He wet his lips with a quick but lascivious tongue as she gawked.

Oh, yes, he knew that look. The girl had been excited by the violence, just as he almost always was, especially when he was a younger man. Just like many women were, watching their lovers defend them. Only, she didn’t know what to do with such a perverse feeling.

But James did. 

He fell upon Tilly passionately, grabbing her hips with bloody, bruised hands to draw her closer. Tilly immediately responded with the affirmation of rising up to meet his hungry mouth, closing her eyes and throwing her arms around his neck to grip the back of his head. Their mouths clashed together in a way that was more punishing and less patient than any kisses they’d shared. It could hardly even be described as a kiss, the way their tongues fought for dominance in each others’ mouths. Her urgency and fierceness surprised and pleased him deeply. 

His tongue left her mouth just long enough so that he could bite at the two pink lobes of her scar-bisected lips, gnashing her lower lip between his teeth like he’d wanted to for days—but hadn’t, lest he hurt her. Tilly yelped but didn’t pull away, instead she reciprocated by mashing her mouth against his, trying to bite him in return, her fingers frantically grasping at his neck, his collar, his hair that was by design too short to pull. He tasted blood, but wasn't sure whose.

James viciously ripped at her skirts, wrenching and gathering up the layers of fabric in a wild hunt to find her bare skin with his fingers. Tilly raised still further up onto her toes, which aided his efforts to get past her apron, dress, skirts, and chemise—before long, he had the skin of her arse cheeks firmly gripped with both hands. Once he had her, he muscled her down until her back was flat against the kitchen floor. Once there, he braced one elbow against the cold hardness of the floorboards, tucking that hand under her head to cradle it and provide him some leverage. His other hand went between her legs to spread her thighs apart without any designs of kindness or generosity. Nonetheless, she moaned throatily in response, biting and licking at his jaw and throat like she was trying to devour him. Tilly was so wet she was practically dripping against his filthy palm. The obscenity of that—her sodden cunt, hot and wanting—sent a rush of blood to his groin, turning that twitch in his cock into a hearty throb as it hardened. He was consumed with the urgent need to put it inside her, to fill her with it.

After a furious wrestle with too much fabric and too many limbs, accompanied by the sounds of both their grunts and groans, James finally had his pants unbuttoned and jerked down on his thighs, just far down enough for his cock to be free. Tilly was hurriedly doing her part to pull her skirts up further and open for him as he positioned himself over her, hooking his arms under her torso to grasp her under the shoulders. He was resting on his elbows, then, so his full weight wasn’t quite on her, but she was soundly pinned between him and the floor. When she whined and squirmed under him, he almost paused to check on her comfort. 

 _Almost._ It didn’t seem necessary, though, because Tilly—who looked downright feverish, she was so flush—was egging him on, whispering filthily into his ear that she wanted him inside of her, that she wanted him to take her right there on the dusty, splintered wood floor. He was hard as nails, now, straining and wiggling to get past the constraints of his own pants so he might get into her.

“I want you to fuck me,” Tilly whispered, repeating the last bit over and over with her lips against the stubble on his jaw. It was the first, second … then fourth time he’d ever heard her say a naughty word like _fuck_ ; he suspected that it was the first time she’d ever said it, as well. He was happy to oblige her request, with every insistent inch of his thick erection aching against the dampness of her thigh. 

“Mm,” he grunted in agreement as he thrust up and forward into her body, finding his mark on the first try. No preparation, no care taken, no patience—just _inside_ : a familiar scenario for him, but altogether foreign in his experience with Tilly. He brutally drove his full length in to the hilt, the friction of their skin dragging the wetness from her soft entrance back into her along the way. He used every bit of moisture to his advantage, and the soaking grip of her permitted him even deeper passage.

Tilly cried out lustily when the head of his cock hit the deepest part of her—her soft, fleshy limit—and the sound was louder than any he’d ever heard her make. It was just short of a scream, really, and he bristled, pausing long enough to withdraw his right arm from under her so he could lightly put his grimy hand over her mouth. He could feel the intake of her breath against his skin, that spot becoming cooler than the surface temperature of his skin or her lips. 

Looking into her wild, open eyes with amusement, he shook his head at the girl, chiding her with a low, slow growl: “Shush now, Tilly—or Atticus will think I’m murdering you … and he'll come in to help.”

His menacing words seemed to have the intended effect on her because not only did Tilly go quiet, she seemed to swoon in his arms. Her sweet eyelashes fluttered and, between them, he saw the whites of her eyes as they rolled toward her crown. Her cheeks were blazing red and there was heat coming off her in musky waves. Mmm, yes, he did indeed relish playing the ravisher—the monster to her bitch in heat—for the first time. Wantonness seemed so out of her gentle character, her sweet nature. As much as he’d gotten to know her, he’d never seen her like this. He wondered, was every woman an actress when it comes to fucking? Or was that the only time that their true selves were displayed?

His cock was fully coated with her silken moisture before long, with more issuing forth with every thrust he made into her. She received all of his cock quite well, especially considering his unceremonious and rough invasion. Rhythmic, soft grunts were the only sounds either of them made as he pounded his hips relentlessly into hers.

Tightening his grip on Tilly’s shoulders, he held her still as he fucked her hard. Impulsively, then, he craned his neck to bite at her neck and under her ears. And, while he was at it, he rasped into her ear a taunt, “You want to be fucked, do you?” 

When she didn’t respond, he pulled out of her almost entirely, paused for a breath, and then pushed back in with waxing intensity. The frayed white cap covering her hair dislodged itself with the impact of his increasingly harder thrusts, falling into the dust under her head. He repeated, practically sneering with faux cruelty, “Hm? Do you?” 

Hissing his warm breath into the small curl of her ear, “You want to be fucked properly hard, Tilly?” 

She nodded quickly, her teeth gritting together, her eyes squeezed tightly shut. Her hands were at his sides, clawing at his back and knotting his shirt into her fists. She snaked her ankles over the back of him until she’d locked her legs over his calves, clinging to him dearly.

“Say it,” he grunted, punctuating each of the words with a fierce thrust into her. “Tell me what you want.”

“I want …” Tilly started, her breath overtaking her words before fading into a series of gasps. Tsking at her, he punished her for not finishing her statement by releasing her shoulders and repositioning his hands to under her head, lacing his fingers together and folding her forward. Tilly yelped again, and reflexively curled her hips up into him, adjusting her legs to latch her thighs around his lower back. He now had the leverage he needed to do what she wanted. All he'd needed was permission.

“Say it,” he reminded her, stalling briefly at the deepest he could go in her.

Her voice trembled as she strained against what had to be an uncomfortable position, locked to him. She managed to moan, “I want—I want you to fuck the … fuck me—fuck me, James, like a … Please!”

Now that he had her begging, he toyed with her, moving his hips only slightly as she clawed at his back to find a better grip. His mouth curled into a grin and he nearly purred, “Like a what, Tilly? How do you want me to fuck you?” 

“Like a … like a. Demon. Like a … like a beast. James, please!” At the last word, she clenched and squeezed his cock inside of her. He almost lost his head right there, but caught himself in time, emitting a very satisfied grunt of approval.

She wanted a monster, so he became a monster for her. The shackles of decency and consideration removed, he fucked his cock into her wildly for several powerful strokes. Tilly just hung on as he then changed position by hooking one arm under her leg. Now, curled over her just as she curled into him, James had her in a different sort of lock: Tilly folded in half, foreheads pressed together, the fingers of one hand gripping her bony hip so roughly that she’d have dark bruises there the next day. He closed his eyes to concentrate on the sensation of using her body without visual distraction, until finally his rhythm found a sweet spot and he could pound her cunt with abandon.

As his release began to build in his balls, he lost track of where or who he was, or she was, or what had just happened or what might happen later. All there was was this: his cock, his pleasure, blood and grime under his fingernails, dust filling his nose, and Tilly’s warm, wet reception of him. He was a beast, fucking for dominance and victory, which he achieved easily, every time. 

When James came, he came hard. It was as rude and brutal of an orgasm as it had been a fuck. His groan upon the finish was loud in the kitchen as his spasming cock spurted inside her. He held Tilly tightly to him while ever-diminishing waves of pleasure convulsed through his body and, when he was finally empty of seed and passion, when he was drained of whatever had possessed them both, he released his hold of her, withdrew his member with a squelching noise, and collapsed his full weight onto her with another—softer—groan. Eyes closing, his head came to rest on her heaving chest, his mouth against crook of her dress’s shoulder. Having finally found catharsis after a tense sequence of events, he relaxed atop her and tried to catch his breath, fondly rubbing her shoulder with the pad of his thumb.

Tilly, also struggling to find her breath, cradled James’ head to her breast and gently combed through his hair with her nails. Her legs, tired as they must have been, fell away from him and splayed out indelicately. The two of them lay there in a haze like that for a few moments, both dripping and spent, until Tilly gently patted his back with her fingers.

“James?” she whispered. 

“Mm?” he replied groggily, lifting his head just a hair’s breadth from her chest.

With considerable gentleness, which had seemed to return to her just as quickly as it had departed, she patted him again, and urged, “Might you get up? You’re crushing me.”

He raised his head higher to see her face, which was still flushed, to find that her expression was serene. Beaming, even. With great affection, he reached up and smoothed a lock of hair from her forehead and sighed, “Yes, Tilly. Of course.”

* * * 

Later that night, after he’d returned from where he’d gone under cover of darkness, Tilly did not help James clean himself before bed. Instead, she sat fully dressed, apron and all, on the edge of his bed. Knees drawn up, she watched him carefully as he attended to his own bloody knuckles and removed his crusted, muddy clothes. She was very quiet, as usual, but it had never really bothered him until that moment. The air was heavy with all the things that he wasn’t saying, that she wasn’t saying. She’d had some time to think, it seemed.

James knew he should explain to her that he had to be like this, why this was his lot, his penance. Why his talents in combat made him useful. That being like this was how he would protect her and also why she should leave him. This horror, this dried blood and caked-on plough mud, was why she should not bear his child or consider traveling with him to the new world.

Tilly hadn’t run from him yet—a fact that infuriated and touched him at the same time. She’d seen him be a monster and she’d stayed. Not just stayed. In fact, soon after, she’d wanted him to fuck her silly on the kitchen floor! As pleasurable as that was, it was stupid and naive for her to stay with him after seeing what she saw. But she’d done so nonetheless. As he washed, the words to a prayer formed in his head. Something to use so that he might influence her to stay.

“Tilly …” he started. He put down the face cloth he was using with cold water from the basin.

“Did you kill him?” Tilly interrupted sharply, a bit of the fire and anger he’d seen earlier in the kitchen reappearing. She peered at him accusingly. “That man in the alley? Have you killed him?”

James was relieved that she’d just come out with it. He went to her, still grimy but now also damp, creakily kneeling before her so they could be eye to eye when he replied, in full honesty: “No.” 

It was true, strictly speaking. Atticus took care of the actual killing part, making good on his flippant promise to Tilly that James wouldn’t kill the drunken sot. James had already helped to tenderize and suppress the man, it was true, but she’d seen that with her own eyes. And, also, later, James helped Atticus get rid of the body by slicing it into chunks and throwing it in the river. But he had not killed the bastard, so that was true.

“Have you killed many people?” The girl, _his_ _girl_ , asked matter-of-factly, her expression blank.

“Yes,” James answered without hesitation, nodding. He reached for her and took her hands in his, as an offering. He added, his eyes moving from the scar on her mouth to the burn on her neck, “Many.”

Tilly also nodded, accepting his admission. Then she asked, “Did they all deserve it?”

James blinked and stared at her. _Deserve_ , hmm. Well, then, if all this was about being deserving of one’s fate … she really should run. It would serve him right. He deserved nothing but the hell he’d earned on that bloody ship, in Zilpha’s arms, in the darkest reaches of Africa. All things that Tilly was blessedly ignorant of. 

Shaking his head, James had to admit that, no, they did not all deserve it. He’d been a soldier, a company man, he reminded her. He’d done many things that he did not want to do, obeying bad orders given by men he didn’t respect, some of whom were the very same men who wanted him dead that day.

“The man in the garden? Was he one of those men?”

“No, Tilly,” he soothed, rubbing his thumb along the calluses along the inner edge of her index finger. She got that chopping vegetables for his stew. “Maybe. I don’t know. He came for Lorna, failed at that, and then he came for you.”

“Mrs Delaney?” Tilly asked, disturbed. “Is she all right?”

James nodded, flinching a bit at the use of his surname.

“He came to kill me, though? You’re certain?” Tilly pressed him. When James nodded, her eyes filled up with tears and she looked away. He couldn’t blame her dismay: She’d only just received promise of a future—from him, from her mother in a dream—and immediately someone came along to try to rob her of all of it. “And the other man, Atticus. Is he a friend or was he here to kill me, as well?”

James squeezed her hands in his, shaking his head no. “Atticus works for me, and for my father before that. I’ve known him a very long time.” 

It was the truth, but he pointedly did not address the questions as to whether or not Atticus was his friend or if he’d actually come to kill Matilda himself. The answers might be unsettling: 1) No, for he had no friends, and 2) … probably not. He continued with another truth, “Atticus came here to find me and discovered that man waiting. For you.” 

After his very tense trot from Lorna’s to his own house, just hours before, James had gone in through the front door and raced through every room, searching for Tilly from attic to kitchen, seeing red the whole time. She must be at market, he reasoned in the quiet kitchen, after not finding her. He collected his thoughts at the table long enough to take off his coat and hat, all the while listening for any secrets that the house might tell him. Instead of secrets, he heard the clanging sound of a cast iron hasp from outside. Rushing on full alert out through the back door, James caught sight of Atticus just as he slammed both of the stranger’s arms in the back garden gate. He’d effectively disarmed the man, in the proverbial if not literal sense, by rendering both of the man’s wrists useless.

Everything was a blackout red-hazed rage for James, after that. His heart’s rhythm hot in his own ears as he sped down the back walk. Atticus barely had time to get out of the way before James barreled through, bodily picked up the stinking pisspot to chuck him out through the gate and into the grungy alley. After three days of being gentlemanly and loving in the attic with Tilly—of listening and waiting, of employing his most sensitive faculties—James couldn’t deny that it felt good to let the monster in him take over. He didn’t need to ask permission to beat this man into a bloody mess, he didn’t need to restrain himself, he didn’t need to think or consider. He just needed to be, to do what he did best. Thus, it was almost done by the time that Tilly came upon them in the alley. All that was left was a bit of knife work, which she interrupted.

James wasn’t entirely sure until well after the interaction was over, and he and Atticus were conversing at the riverbank, why Atticus had been there in the first place. How he’d known of Lorna, or even where James lived, he still wasn’t aware. Otherwise, the situation seemed as James guessed, that this wastrel had been looking for a way to get to James and found his opportunity with Tilly, who he’d lain in wait for. Maybe old Fitzy had been watching the house all morning. Maybe he’d even been watching as James, still adrift on thoughts of Tilly and her confounding dream, left for the docks that morning. 

Who else had Fitzwilliams thought to exploit? Not Zilpha, surely, his sister’s house was a fortress in comparison to his and she was never without Geary. Just Lorna, just Matilda?

Ultimately, it didn’t matter anymore. Fitzwilliams had been parceled into chunks of unrecognizable meat and his body would soon be taken out on the tides. Tilly had seen what she’d seen, exorcised whatever demon she needed to rid herself, and, that night, she’d asked what she needed to ask. It was all over. 

But for the dreams, of course. It was all over but for the dreams.

 


	12. Eid Ma Clack Shaw

CHAPTER 11: Eid Ma Clack Shaw

Each night, Tilly waited for James to come back to her. She tried not to look like she was waiting—by working on various projects, cooking or clothing repairs—but most of the time, she failed. Mr Brace seemed unconcerned, for his part, only taking time to address her directly when it came to housekeeping issues. 

Sometimes, James still wasn’t home when she’d wake in the night, so she’d go to the circular window of the attic to look outside at the water — or the moon, or the foreshore, or the ships, or whatever else there was to see—to wait for him. More than once, she fell asleep right there, wrapped in a quilt, curled up in the crescent of the round window with her face pressed against the cold glass. Along with a host of new experiences that James had brought to her came a crushing longing for him, and loneliness, which she’d never truly felt before. No one to love means no one to lose means no one to miss. 

Some mornings, Tilly woke up alone in the attic, shivering and gray in spirit, feeling quite empty. On those mornings, she knew not to expect to see James until at least midday, when he’d return, usually muddy or bloody or both, from whatever task had kept him out. Some of those lonely days, James might only come home to dress a wound or change clothes and immediately head back out into the fog. A few times, he was so lost in thought that he barely spoke to her; while, other days, he ranted to her about problems she didn’t understand, featuring players whose names she’d never heard. She listened quietly as she tended to him. Some occasions, he sat at the table just long enough to eat a quick, hot meal. Even on the rushed days, when he was at his most haggard and raw, he always found a moment to pull Tilly to him, maybe as she passed by him on her way to the kettle or the cupboard. He’d seat her atop his muscled thighs at the table and bury his nose in the crook between her neck and shoulder, squeezing her tightly in his strong arms. 

Most times, James held her this way silently, in that brief respite, but some days, he whispered in Tilly’s ear about how he wished he could carry her up to the attic and fall asleep between her legs, or tell her how he’d spent the night on the water, wanting her when he should have been rowing instead—or something else that was likely false but wonderful.

James’ persistent affection had the effect of bolstering her trust and, in turn, Tilly attempted to honor him by never asking him where he’d spent the night. Not because she wasn’t curious or afraid (she was—both), but because she believed in her heart that James would always come back for her, one way or another. 

Further, Tilly knew she could find him in his dreams. If it came to that.

 

Tilly was asleep and dreaming in his bed, curled around a warming brick wrapped in several layers of canvas, when James, already undressed, silently slipped into the bed behind her. Her skin’s temperature seemed several degrees cooler than his to the touch—a phenomenon he was used to, as he ran hotter than most, but it was still a soothing sensation he craved. The girl stirred a bit and he shushed her, pressing his nose into the back of her head to inhale deeply. He hungered for her hair’s scent, like pine boughs and open waters. How did she manage to smell like that in London, in his father’s mildewy old house. 

James softly ran his hand across the cool skin of Tilly’s thigh, pushing her nightdress up as he went, until his hand was cupping the largest bone of her pelvis. Breathing in and out deeply, he closed his eyes and focused his attention on finding that liminal state, that in-between of the insubstantial and the substantial, the sacred and the profane, that would permit him to enter Tilly’s dream.

To his disappointment, when he found her in her dream, she was standing by herself at the waterfront, watching a black-hulled ship with flaming sails as it slowly sank. He reached out to put his hand on her shoulder and said her name. When she turned, her tearstained face looked to be in a state of agony, and she cried out, “James! You are on the ship as it burns.”

James, in the dream, pulled her into an embrace and murmured, “Shhhh now, Tilly, you’re dreaming. I’m here with you, in our bed. Come back to me.” He held her to him and stroked her hair, both in the dream and in the flesh, so when she woke, she found she was not alone. James was nearly encircling her in his bed, with his body curled around hers just as she was curled around the warming brick. Tilly whimpered a little and began to turn over, but James pressed himself closer to her and held her still with his body weight.

“It was on fire, you were lost,” she sighed sleepily, as she reached behind her to touch the bare skin of his leg. “Was it … was it _your_ ship?”

“Hm … yes,” he admitted in a whisper, moving his hand to stroke her soft breast. He lightly kissed the back of her neck and quietly urged, “But never mind. It was a dream. I’m here now.”

He let his fingers travel over Tilly’s breasts and her delicate collarbones, her bony shoulders and the puckered scars at her neck, before he let them meander further down to the raised hem of her nightshirt, which was tucked just above the smooth, sharp blade of her hip. Dragging the cloth over her torso, she shifted in his arms, allowing him to pull the garment over her body and then off over her head. When she was as naked as he was, he rolled the girl onto her back so he could have better access to the sweet landscape of her body. 

The candle he’d brought to the attic with him illuminated her face just enough for him to see that her eyes were open now, regarding him with pure adulation, darkened with a little bit of hurt. He halted his hand’s movement over the soft skin of her stomach and knit his brows in consternation. “What is it? The ship? Don’t concern yourself, Tilly.”

She shook her head and reached a hand up to gently cup his jaw in her small palm. “No,” she replied, “I thought you were lost and wouldn’t come back to me.”

James’ eyes softened and he leaned his face into her hand, nuzzling it with his whiskers before murmuring, “I will always come back to you. I promise.” He ducked further down to kiss her lips and she responded by pressing against him and deepening the kiss further. Pulling away, he looked at her evenly to swear to her an oath that he hoped he could make good on: "Even if I’m cut down, I’ll come to you in your dreams."

It seemed to be what Tilly needed to hear, because she reached both arms around him and parted her mouth to accept his. James licked at the inside of her mouth and sucked lightly at her tongue before withdrawing to add further instruction. “Open your legs to me now,” he ordered Tilly, as light as a tone as he could muster when offering direction. He gently pulled at her small, stiffening pink nipple in his fingers and she gasped against his cheek. “I’ve thought of nothing but being inside you since I left here."

 

Tilly wasn’t ready for him. Not even his fingers, much less anything else. Tilly had just been pulled from a dream that, bad as it was, was telling her something, and it was still very much on her mind, despite James’ fingers touching her softly. When he noticed that she was not ready, he murmured against her neck and immediately moved his mouth down her body. His mouth pausing at her nipple, the ridges of her ribs, and her achingly ticklish hipbone, he jostled her and maneuvered himself until he ended up crouched over Tilly, with his face between her legs, his hands pulling her thighs away from each other. She arched her back reflexively and shivered when his warm tongue found her center and he licked her firmly from bottom to top like he was a giant cat and she was a plate of milk. 

The vulnerability of having him so close to her intimate parts took some getting use to, but she knew that James found great satisfaction in giving her direct attention with his tongue. He’d already started rubbing himself against the bed, she noticed, when she opened her eyes to watch him. Still only half awake, it was like a new dream had begun, watching him attend to her like this: his back muscles flexing as he held each her thighs crooked in his elbows, his hips gyrating slowly, his neck straining to reach his tongue deeper into her, suck at her skin or lick her with more force. She relaxed back into the bed and closed her eyes, only to open them seconds later when he pulled back. By the time Tilly lifted her head to see what was happening, he’d already locked her legs open with his arms and was spreading her open with hands hooked over her upper thighs. With an intense expression and his brow creased in concentration, James skillfully parted the lips of her sex to provide himself easier access to her clitoris, which he gently manipulated with the meaty pad of his thumb.

“Mm,” James grunted appreciatively, ducking his head back between her thighs to lick and suck at the part of her he’d just exposed and rubbed to full arousal. He diligently worked at her with his mouth as if it was his solemn duty to make her come, his ministrations punctuated by a series of determined grunts and groans, as if she was something puzzling and delicious.

Her pleasure crept up on her like a mist in the forest, slowly building small in her abdomen, then spreading through to her chest and arms, up her neck, tightening like a vise around her nervous system. It was a far cry from the brutal and greedy fuck they’d had on the floor of the kitchen, this. He was intent on her pleasure now, taking his time. 

James’ intensity, even when he was being soft with her, was so crushing and relentless that Tilly found that unless he split his focus on his own satisfaction as well, it was almost too much to bear. She didn’t even attempt it, now. Neither of them wanted her to deny herself, so she let the waves of her orgasm sweep her out to sea like a rip tide.

She was still shaking and disoriented from the impact of her climax when James found his way up to slowly press his cock inside Tilly. He exhaled a deep sigh as he entered her, as if he’d found great relief in sinking into her skin, before brushing his lips along the knife scar that creased her cheek. She taste herself on his lips when he kissed her, his hands cradling the sides of her face as he pivoted his hips slowly into and out of her. There was no frenetic urgency to James’ movement, now. No rush, just sweet and sincere affection. 

Tilly intuited that this slow gentleness was James’ most authentic and true expression of care—possibly his only expression of it. That this man could be capable of such brutality, such savage violence, but also be so … loving, so careful, so tender with her was a mystery to Tilly. Maybe all love was like this: a constant dichotomy, an uneasy shuffle along a small ledge, a tenuous balance of opposites that aligned just long enough for two people to make meaningful contact.

James held her tightly to him for a long while after he’d finished, staying still as his breathing became less jagged and his heartbeat slowed. He seemed exhausted but content as he cradled Tilly in the crook of his shoulder and idly brushed her hair away from her neck and ears.

“I’ve received a letter. From your aunt Clara,” James intoned flatly, his words pulling Tilly out of the hazy twilight of sleepiness, back into the warm tangibility of his embrace. She twisted her neck to look at him only to find that he was expressionless. Clara. Her stomach fell, thinking one of the children must have passed, which would be her fault because she was their primary caregiver, and she’d never forgive herself if her selfishness resulted in someone’s death. Her worries must have shown in her eyes, because James added without delay, “Nothing to worry about, Tilly. She’s inquired as to your well-being. Asked after money. She was worried I’d sold you off at the docks, most likely, as she’s received none of your wages after two months of you being in my service.”

Tilly couldn’t help but gasp, she was so appalled. She tensed up, a strong contrast to the loosened state she’d been enjoying after sex. The shame was almost too much. She’d forgotten entirely about sending money back to her aunt! That was the arrangement: Tilly would work in London and send the bulk of her wages back for the support of the children. She sat straight up, leveraging one hand against James’ chest for support.

“Oh no. James, I’d forgotten her completely!” she cried, almost ready to get out of bed, put her clothes on and leave the house to immediately rectify her mistake. She’d run there if she had to. Unreasonable, yes, but the feelings of guilt and shame welling up in her made her want to vomit.

James snorted dismissively at her alarm and grasped her wrist to pull her back down into bed, amused. “Tilly, rest yourself. It’s still dark,” he said evenly, trying to soothe her. “Anyway, it’s not your fault. I’m not sure you’ve noticed but … I also haven’t actually _paid_ you yet.”

It was true. Both that he hadn’t paid her and she hadn’t noticed. Tilly sank back down until her head was resting on the black lines across his chest. Being under his charge and payment went hand in hand, of course, but the thought also sickened her a little, in light of being flattened in love with him. She was so carried away by James, by all that had passed between them in the attic, in that house, that she hadn’t stopped to think about anyone else—not even herself. Every day was more or less a contented routine of caring for him by cooking and cleaning and laying with him when he came to her. She was devoted but unmoored. What was she to James, really? A caretaker? A maid? A wife? A lover? An uncompensated whore? She knew what Clara would say, and she knew the judgment that would accompany the charge. She was more than a maid, but far less than a wife. She was James’ fool. 

James was perceptive enough, it seemed, that he sense when her inner dismay had became outer, and he nonchalantly squeezed her shoulder, rubbing it in consolation. “Hey-hey, it’s all right, Tilly. I will make good on what I promised her, don’t fret,” he whispered, sounding weary as he kissed her temple and settled more deeply into his pillow.

Tilly shook her head and mumbled, “I’ll go tomorrow. It’s my responsibility. I’ll hire a carriage and bring her whatever you …” She trailed off as she realized she didn’t have the courage to ask him for money or even just what he might owe her for the job she’d already done.

James clucked at her, finally seeming to cotton on to the notion that she was upset. He murmured, “Mmm, nah, Tilly. No. You’ll do nothing of the sort. You are with me now, and I’ll take care of it.”

She didn’t know what to say. She had no confirmation of what she was to James, but it was a strong comfort that he counted her as being with him, in any sense. Tilly put an arm across James’ stomach, cozying into his embrace, although her forehead still broadcast her worries.

After many moments of both of them laying silently in thought, James tapped his fingers against Tilly’s arm again like he’d just decided something. He cleared his throat and told her, with a tone that passed for amused: “We’ll go see your family together. It’s not a far ride, and your aunt will want to see you—if only to verify that I’ve not chopped you into a stew.”

Tilly nodded against him, still morose but cheering up considerably at the prospect of leaving London with him. Also, she didn’t voice her thoughts, because she was sure that James couldn’t handle the mockery, but she had sincere doubts that anyone would believe that James Keziah Delaney, scourge of London, would stoop so low as to make his own stew.


End file.
